Lizard People

by Charlie Price

  Where was Z? Was she boycotting family dinners? Hubie’s older sister, Kaitlin, would answer only to “Z.” She is the bump in the Ludlow family road. Or, maybe in her case, pothole. When Mr. Ludlow asked her what “Z” stood for, she said, “Hypocrisy.” When he pointed out there was no z in hypocrisy, she said, “Exactly!”

  In the almost-perfect Ludlow family, she is the anti-daughter. She’s against everything her mother stands for. She shrivels you with a scathing look if you call her a goth. But what is she? Her ears are like chain-link fences, she has a diamond stud in her nose, and I don’t know if it stops there. She favors light makeup and dark eye shadow and thrift-store-chic outfits. Punk diva goes Hindu.

  Z has beaucoup causes that she constantly champions: alternatives to fossil fuel, preserve our redwoods, conserve water, feed the hungry, medical care for everyone. And a number of things she argues against: bigotry, war, corporate greed, and so on. I have loved her since the day Hubie and I became friends and he invited me home. She was doing her homework in their living room while she danced to something on MTV. I was in fifth grade and she was in middle school. Now, she’s a sophomore at Sierra Junior College in town.

  Z was a hurdler in high school until something happened between her and the coach. After that, no more organized sports. Today when she walked into the dining room, she had on black tights under a sari thing, with a ratty jean jacket vest over it. Black knit watchcap on top. A thick book tucked under her arm. “You’re not a duck,” she said when she saw me. Was that a compliment?

  She picked two plums out of the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, took a chicken leg off my plate, and left the room. Hubie’s mom rolled her eyes. Mr. Ludlow didn’t seem to notice.

  Even with the odd moment, it was a comfort to sit and eat with a real family and listen to their conversation and not have to think about anything or do anything. Until afterward, when I bussed the dishes and washed them while Hubie stuck the cleaned ones in the drainer.

  “How are things?” he asked, while we were standing together at the sink.

  I shook my head. “Not so good,” I said, “and I’m pretty sure they’re…” I stopped myself. I didn’t need that kind of prophecy.

  I went looking for Z before I headed back home. She was in her room with the door closed. I knocked.

  “Closed for a reason,” she said.

  “Yeah, I figured,” I said through the door. “I just thought I’d say hi before I left.”

  I could hear her move across the floor. It sounded like she sat down and leaned against the door on her side. I sat and leaned, too. Now we were back-to-back with the door between. Was this as close as we’d ever be?

  “So, WWF, how’s things?” she asked.

  World Wrestling Federation. She had come with Hubie to see a couple of my matches last year. In general, she thought wrestling for sport was beyond ridiculous.

  “Not so good. Mom blew out at school today. Tackled an office worker. Called her a Lizard.”

  “Right at school?”

  “Big time.”

  “Pretty tough,” she said. “Maybe you should send the office woman a card. Like, uh, ‘Sorry we mistook you for a reptile, get well soon, the Manders.’ Smooth things over.”

  “Thanks. You’re really helpful.”

  “Want me to open the door?”

  I did. I wanted her to hug me. I wanted to smell that weird oil she puts on and hear the soft jangle of her earrings.

  “No,” I said. “Why aren’t I a duck?”

  “Wittgenstein,” she said. “The book I’m reading. Philosophy. The clarity of language. You’re not a duck, are you?”

  “No,” I said. Many of my conversations with Z were like this. In the ozone layer. “You okay?”

  “Breathing,” she said. “Hey, don’t let the setbacks get you down. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe? Thirty-seven. Thousands of kids dying of AIDS every morning. Puts our day-to-day shit in perspective.”

  I could hear her getting up.

  “Later, Head-in-the-Armpit Boy.”

  I should never have invited her to see me wrestle.

  Out to Get You

  During the next couple of weeks, I went to school every day, but I couldn’t keep my mind on my classes. I kicked myself for not getting Marco’s phone number. I would like to have heard how he dealt with his mom’s repeated crashes.

  A couple of afternoons I went fishing just south of the Cypress Bridge. I worked the flats where some trout were feeding on tiny midges. I caught a couple on those and later, a couple more on yarn salmon eggs. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking about. I was pretty much in another dimension, on automatic pilot, doing what I was told and going wherever I was supposed to be. Other kids kept their distance.

  Early on a Tuesday morning, I found out where my mind had been. Hatching a contingency plan.

  I was awakened by Mom’s keening. I lurched out of bed and found her in the living room, just finishing stuffing red crepe paper all around the edge of the front door. She turned as I came in. She had the red line of lipstick across her forehead and the area from her bottom lip to her chin was solid red.

  “Go lock the back door and check the food,” she said, digging in the tote bag at her feet.

  I knew she was looking for the red metal Celtic cross.

  “Mom—”

  “Go,” she said, not looking up. “They’re already here, all over outside. See how much food we have. Make a list.”

  There was no point in arguing with Mom, paranoid and energized.

  I walked into the kitchen, picked up a pad and pencil from the table near the phone, and started: milk, bacon, lettuce, just a one-word kind of list. I made a quick inventory of the fridge and pantry, went back into the living room, and handed it to Mom. She was busy tying red ribbons on all the lamps.

  The Lizard People were back.

  Time for my plan. I grabbed the phone out of the hall and took it to my room.

  The woman who answered Dad’s cell phone didn’t know where he was. She said maybe he was working out of town. And then she started crying. She said he left one night about two weeks ago and she hadn’t seen him since.

  “You’re his son, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you see him,” she said, “ask him to give Charlene, me, a call. I need some help with the rent and we can still be friends. Tell him that. Okay?”

  “Did he take any clothes? Or his laptop or anything?”

  “No. Not even this phone. We were arguing. He just walked out. Well, his computer was probably still in his car.” She coughed. “Hey, you tell him I’m sorry for my part in it. Okay?” she said, sniffling.

  “Any idea where he might have gone?” I was picturing what Dad’s car looked like.

  “Huh-uh. I called the places we go out to. They say they haven’t seen him. I called his office, and they say he hasn’t been back to work. I even called the police and hospitals this week. I thought maybe something happened to him. They never heard of him.”

  From the way she pronounced her words, it sounded to me like maybe she had been drinking. Was Charlene such a big improvement over Mom? What is it with Dad?

  “I told him he ought to stop taking all that Vicodin, and six-packs on top of it,” she said. “I told him it made him like a zombie. He’s just out there sulking. A motel or something. I don’t see how he could be driving very far, the way he gets.”

  Dad. The stable one in our family. Yeah, he used a lot of pills for his back pain, and he always had a beer going at home, but he didn’t get comatose and he didn’t get mean. He just got slowed down. And he could come out of it okay if Mom went on a tear.

  Major problem he had was his work. No schedule. Long periods of nothing happening followed by some intense deal closing. He sold commercial pumps: irrigation, wells, circulating pumps for factory machinery. Most years he made a fair amount of money on commission.

  He’d been the only salesman for Carbondale Pu
mps in northern California for years. He traveled some, drumming up business. He had his own contacts, and his laptop kept him current on inventory and e-mail orders, so I guess if he wanted to take a couple of weeks off, he could. No big deal. But when he was living at home, whenever he went on the road, he always packed his bags and took them with him. I didn’t like the sound of Dad leaving empty-handed and not coming back.

  I thanked Charlene and got off the phone to make a circuit of our house. Make sure the red candles weren’t setting anything on fire. So far everything was okay, and I found Mom in the hall closet, sitting on the floor and singing hymns. Her voice wasn’t great but I didn’t think it would drive Lizards away.

  “You better get in here,” Mom said. “I don’t know if the cross will hold them.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I told her. “I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m just making sure the windows are tight and the candles are safe. You go ahead.” She started singing again and I closed the door.

  I called Dad’s work number. Maybe he’d found another woman and told the office people not to tell Charlene anything. I had met Dad’s boss and I thought he’d tell me the truth. When he came on the line, Mr. Tracy said he hadn’t seen or talked to Dad for the past week. He thought Dad was on a road trip through Siskiyou County because that area was next on his schedule, but he hadn’t called in for any parts or sales confirmations, which was unusual. “Things must be pretty dead,” he concluded.

  I decided to take the car and check every motel in town. Probably Dad was holed up.

  Mom first. I went to the bathroom to check the garbage can. Nobody ever empties it until it begins to spill over onto the floor. Down about the middle, I found Mom’s current antipsychotic meds. I knew she was also supposed to be taking Klonopin to knock down anxiety, and I didn’t think she’d toss that. I checked the medicine cabinet. Yep, the Klonopin was there, along with some old Ativan, and the sleepers: Dalmane and Ambien.

  I took an Ativan and two Ambien to crush and put in mom’s soda. She was tough to figure. The last time she went nuts, I tried to sedate her with Everclear in her fruit juice. Oops. Instead of falling asleep, she decided to drive to the sheriff’s office and knocked down our mailbox and our neighbor’s bay tree before I got her out from behind the wheel. I was hoping the Ativan would slow her down and the Ambien would put her out for a few hours.

  Mom was very suspicious of medication, having had some pretty rough times in the hospitals. I couldn’t just hand her the meds. Back in the kitchen, I mashed the pills between two spoons, keeping an eye on the closet door. I poured the powder into a glass of Mom’s favorite, Coke Classic, and added extra lemon to cover the taste.

  “Check the back porch,” Mom told me when I opened the closet again.

  I handed her the doctored soda.

  “I think that’s how they got in last time,” she said, taking a long drink. “Do you still have that red T-shirt?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll put it on in a sec.”

  She was looking over my shoulder, distracted by the bars of light the venetian blinds cast against the far wall.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re going to need liquids if you’re going to be on watch today. Finish the Coke and I’ll bring you a bottle of water.”

  When I came back, she handed me the empty glass, and I handed her a liter of water and the pillows and blankets I’d brought to make her more comfortable.

  “You keep singing and I’ll take care of the other stuff in the house.”

  “Unscrew the lightbulbs,” she said. “I don’t want them listening to us when we talk. And Ben?”

  I stopped and waited for her to speak.

  “Whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  Tough life. All your appliances are out to get you.

  Twenty minutes later, when I looked in on her, Mom was dozing. I dug the car keys out of her purse and went to look for Dad. I didn’t think he would spring for something expensive, but I checked the Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Red Lion parking lots first, then the other motels on Hillside Drive, then the cheap places on 273, and finally the downtown places on Main. No sign of his car.

  Next the bars. Nothing at the Tropicana or Dave’s Blue Light Club, the Coop, or any of the other dives I drove by. I know Dad doesn’t like to drink in restaurants or pizza places. I was ready to give up, when I remembered the Pit, five miles north in Lake Vista. “A good pour,” is how Dad had described it when we drove by one day. Right. His car was parked around the rear where the blacktop gave way to weeds. Hidden from the street.

  He was in a back corner near the storeroom, with his laptop and a bottle of beer on the table in front of him. The booth was dark. I couldn’t see his face. He was scribbling on some papers beside the computer. He didn’t look up till I sat down.

  “Ben,” he said, but he didn’t seem particularly surprised.

  “Hi, Dad. How are you doing?”

  “What brings you in here?” he asked, signaling the heavyset bleach-blond bartender and mouthing the word “Coke” at her.

  “Mom is going off. It started again this morning with the red and the candles. I need your help.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” he asked, but he didn’t seem to care about the answer. He was looking away, over to the bar, and holding up two fingers like he wanted a double for himself.

  “Come on, Dad, I can’t get her admitted to any hospital without you. You can at least take Mom into the unit and ask them to evaluate her.”

  “I’m done with your mom,” he said, as if that was the last word on the matter.

  “She’s still your wife,” I reminded him. “You have to help me. There’s nothing else I can do by myself.”

  He pursed his lips. “Okay,” he said. “I got to whiz and then we’ll finish these drinks I just ordered and then we’ll go home.” He stood up and headed around the bar, toward the restrooms.

  I was restless. Any minute Mom was going to wake up and the home situation would escalate to the next level. That could be anything: neighbors, police, firemen, even a local news team.

  The waitress served his double whatever-it-was and my Coke, gave me a crumpled smile, and went back to the bar. I began to wonder where Dad was. It didn’t usually take him this long to shower, shave, and dress at home.

  I went to the men’s room.

  Empty.

  I ran outside. His car was gone. Gone. Damn him. Lazy, good-for-nothing bastard! I wanted to punch him.

  I headed home.

  When I got there, Mom wouldn’t let me in.

  “You’re infected,” she yelled through the door.

  Lizard pox?

  I left and went to the police station.

  Danger to Self

  “My mom has stopped taking her medication, and she’s a danger to herself and others,” I told the policeman behind the counter at the station.

  His face didn’t have any expression. I guess you get that way working behind the counter in a police station. He waited for me to go on.

  “She has locked the house and won’t let me in, and my dad won’t come help get her admitted.”

  Still the old stoneface.

  “She’s been admitted before, here and in Sacramento.” I was trying to think of the right words to get him to do something. “Uh, I’m her son, and I’m requesting a safety-and-welfare check on Mrs. Noreen Mander, 3212 Sandie Lane.”

  “Name?” No change in expression, but at least Stone-face was finally speaking.

  “Noreen—”

  “Your name?”

  “Ben Mander.”

  “Residence?”

  “Same place,” I said. “I’m a student at Sierra High.”

  “Take a seat, please,” he said, and nodded toward some wooden chairs against the side wall. “An officer will be with you shortly.” The man’s attention shifted to the next person in line behind me.

  The patrolman was huge. He looked like a blue wool mountain
. “Mander?” he said.

  “Yes.” I stood up.

  The man’s face was round, bisected by a sparse black mustache. He yawned.

  “Your mother has destabilized?” he said, but it didn’t really sound like a question. “This is, what, the third time in the past couple of months?”

  “Second or third,” I said.

  “Has she been drinking or using street drugs?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Really, I guess, uh, I don’t know. I think just benzodiazepines, uh, you know, antianxiety stuff like Klonopin.”

  “Any guns in the house?”

  “No. She’s not exactly dangerous,” I said. “She hits and bites when she’s afraid and cornered, but she doesn’t actually try to hurt people.”

  “She’s locked herself in your home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a car?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to meet the mental health liaison at your house in ten minutes. We’ll probably take your mother to the hospital for an emergency evaluation. Meet us at the hospital in thirty minutes. Don’t go back home. You’ll just be in the way.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with a thick finger, like he was thinking how complicated this might get. “I know this is rough on you,” he said. “Don’t worry. We won’t hurt her.” He looked me in the eyes. “I mean it.”

  He was out the door before I could think of anything to say.

  Something’s Happened

  Marco! Marco was sitting in the admitting area of the hospital when I walked in. I recognized him right away.

  “Something’s happened to me,” he said without looking up.

  I looked at him closer. He looked kind of shaggy, but I couldn’t see any injury.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him, wondering if he would suggest I sit down beside him. I gave the room a quick scan to make sure Mom hadn’t arrived yet.