Inappropriate Behavior: Stories

by Murray Farish

  I say, “David Ferrie was a man of wide and varied interests. For example—”

  Nikki says, “I wish my parents would go to fucking Naples.”

  Rachel Weld sighs.

  Kevin Cooper sighs.

  I try to think of the grossest, most salacious thing I can think of to get them interested. I think, David Ferrie used to have drag parties at his home in New Orleans. I think, David Ferrie participated in the CIA’s early experiments with LSD and mind control. I think, David Ferrie made his own wigs out of bright orange monkey hair.

  Nikki Sloan starts beeping. She takes her cell phone out of her pocket, texts something.

  I think, David Ferrie studied the voodoo religions of the Caribbean, and regularly attended secret rites. I think, There were human tissue samples found in David Ferrie’s apartment, and they were not his own. I think, None of this does justice to David Ferrie.

  Nikki Sloan dials a number, says to her cell phone, “Quit texting me, freak.”

  Kevin Cooper says, “My parents are going to Des Moines this spring.”

  Tiffany Konsakis urgently whispers, “Bell, bell, bell, bell, bellbellbell.”

  The bell rings and everyone leaves.

  I sit and think, New Orleans DA Jim Garrison said that David Ferrie was one of history’s most important individuals.

  9

  “Because here’s the thing, Jill,” my therapist says. “Lots of people, when they’ve been through something like this, even long after it’s over, they still have the stress of the experience. And that stress shows itself in some strange ways.”

  “I was never really that stressed,” I say. “I know that sounds awful.”

  “And since he didn’t have any hair,” my therapist says, “and he was obsessed with cancer. I just think there’s a connection here we’re not exploring thoroughly enough.”

  “It was a long time after that I started seeing him,” I say.

  “Well,” my therapist says, “a year or so.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s not that long. The body has needs. When the body is threatened by such a terrible stress, it releases chemicals to help you fight. Your body is still in the mode of fighting. Or there are still these chemicals built up in your body that have nowhere to go and nothing to do now.”

  “So you’re saying David Ferrie is adrenaline?”

  “Not just that. Or not even that, Jill,” he says. “But he’s not alive and walking the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, either. That’s for sure.”

  I say nothing until the time runs out, at which point I get up and leave.

  Outside on the street, my mother is waiting. It’s nice to walk home with her.

  “You don’t have to keep going to him if you don’t want to,” my mother says.

  “Daddy wants me to.”

  “Well, your father doesn’t understand you like I do,” she says, taking my hand. “He thinks that it was harder on you than it was. He doesn’t know how strong you are. How smart. How wonderful. He just doesn’t know.”

  “I’ll keep at it a little while longer,” I say. “For him.”

  “You’re my wonderful girl, Jill,” my mother says. “Such a caring, beautiful girl.”

  10

  It’s one thing to assassinate a president, although it’s relatively rare in the US. There have only been four out of forty-four: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK.

  But it’s another thing to get away with assassinating a president. This takes not only extraordinary planning, financing, and will, but also a considerable amount of luck. In the case of the Kennedy plot, even surviving involvement in it was quite a feat. Many, many people connected with the events in Dealey Plaza died pretty soon after November 22 of 1963. The London Sunday Times said that as of 1967, the number of dead people involved in the case was actuarially impossible, odds like one hundred thousand trillion to one. I don’t know how to write that as a number, but it’s big. The best overall count of these deaths was done by Jim Marrs in his book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. Marrs put the count, as of 1989, at 103, which is twenty-six years later, yes, but it’s still a lot of dead people from a fairly small pool.

  And along with the heart attacks and cancers and “long illnesses” that you’d expect, there were the weird deaths, the creepy ones, the karate chops to the neck and dismemberments and execution-style bullets behind the ear and sudden, overwhelming cancer, as in the case of Jack Ruby, the only person who we know for sure is a killer in the whole thing.

  Marrs’s count has forty-three deaths from “natural causes,” including heart attack, cancer, and other illness. The next most common cause is murder, sixteen of them, most from gunshot, but we also find ax wounds and bar brawls and the case of mobster John Roselli, who was stabbed a mere sixty-eight times, garroted, dismembered, and then stuffed into a weighted metal oil drum and set adrift in Miami’s Dumfoundling Bay. There were eight deaths ruled suicide, two drug overdoses, six “accidental” gunshot wounds, five plane crashes (the safest form of transport, statistically), two fatal falls, two electrocutions, one fire death (although this victim may have also been shot). One man died of surgical complications, one of a heater explosion, one of a hunting accident, one collapsed after a routine military physical. Six died in automobile accidents, four of them single-car accidents, including taxi driver William Whaley, who drove Oswald to his rooming house just after the assassination (at the time of his death in 1965, Whaley was the only Dallas taxi driver ever killed on duty).

  David Ferrie officially died of an accidental blow to the neck when he lost consciousness after suffering a blackout that may or may not have been caused by either extremely high blood pressure or an overdose of pills. Despite this perfectly natural death, Ferrie somehow managed to compose two suicide notes that were found in his apartment—one was signed in his hand, the other was not.

  11

  My mother’s leukemia diagnosis came the summer I turned thirteen. The initial odds for survival were one in five, which is twenty percent, an easy number to write. I’d see it everywhere, on the walls of the hospital room, on the bedsheets. My mother’s eyes were little 20s, the palms of the nurses’ hands were tattooed with 20s. I even started counting to twenty, over and over again, all day long, my life broken down into tiny progressions or interminable marches—sometimes it took forever to count to twenty.

  12

  Jim Marrs followed up Crossfire with Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us, which is too nutty for words. If I start seeing aliens among us, then I’ll take this delayed-stress business a bit more seriously.

  13

  Today I saw David Ferrie in the vintage-clothing store, pondering a pair of gabardine pants that would have beautifully matched the silver tweed overcoat he wore. I moved toward him as he headed for the fitting rooms, then ducked behind a hat tree and waited.

  This was it. The store wasn’t crowded. I knew if I could just wait long enough, he’d come out to purchase his pants, and on his way to the counter I’d step from behind the hat tree, and we’d finally meet, or something. At least he’d know I knew. I’d somehow make sure of that. I waited.

  I would say—I think those pants will look very nice on you, sir.

  I would say—I understand gabardine is a very comfortable fabric.

  I would say—Gabardine was first introduced as the fabric in which the Italian Air Force outfitted its pilots.

  I would say—Do you think it’s possible, that if we were wearing vintage clothing, and someone hypnotized us, we could somehow channel the person the clothes belonged to originally?

  I would say—I know who you are.

  I waited. Finally, the vintage-clothing-store lady said, “Can I help you with something, miss?”

  “No,” I said. “Go away.”

  The vintage-clothing-store lady said, “Excuse me?”

  “Would you please go away?” I said. “You’re ruining this.”

  She said, “
What’s the problem?”

  “I’m trying to have a vintage-clothing-store shopping experience here, and you’re ruining it.” I turned on her. “I thought you people were famous for never helping anyone. Isn’t that right? You just stand around, and then when someone comes up and buys something you charge them too much for it, and then you scoff. Isn’t that right? What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see I’m interested in these . . .”

  I turned to see where I was, then said, “Hats,” and then I panicked because I’d taken my eye off the fitting room, and when I turned to look around the store, I knew before I saw it what I’d see. The front door to the store closing behind a man in a silver tweed overcoat, his shoulders barely visible above the racks of crap they sell in these stores. And then I tried to move quickly for the door, but the vintage-clothing-store lady grabbed my arm and said, “I demand an apology,” but I pulled free and ran for the door, knocking over a bucket of black umbrellas as I passed, then out into the street and saw, of course, nothing.

  I went home and cried on my bed for an hour. I had been so close, but he’d gotten away again. I cried louder now, hoping to get my mother to come in the room and ask me what was wrong, like she always did. I screamed at the top of my lungs, but this time she never came.

  14

  “So,” my therapist says, “from here on out, no more screwing around. No more tricks, no more brain-picking, no more anything. Just two people talking. Deal?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “So why is it that you’re obsessed with David Ferrie?”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I just see him around the neighborhood all the time.”

  “Jill,” my therapist says, “the man is dead.”

  “I see you all the time, too,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with you.”

  “The man is dead.”

  “According to whom?” I say. “The New Orleans Police Department? The House Committee on Assassinations? You?”

  “The man is dead.”

  “The what . . . the . . . the damn Warren Commission?”

  “The man is dead,” he says.

  “The CIA?”

  “Do you ever see any other people around the neighborhood?”

  “You can never believe anything,” I say. “No one’s ever telling the truth. Ever.”

  “How about Elvis?” he says. “Lots of people see Elvis.”

  “Please.”

  “So you do believe that Elvis is dead,” he says.

  “Please. It’s not even the same thing. Of course Elvis is dead.”

  “How about John Kennedy, then? If you can never be sure . . .”

  “I’m pretty sure Kennedy’s dead,” I say.

  “What about Marilyn Monroe?”

  “Don’t start . . .”

  “What about Lincoln? You haven’t seen old Honest Abe at the pet store on Euclid, have you?”

  “You jerk.”

  “Why, Jill? Why am I a jerk? Because I’m tired of hearing about David Ferrie every time you walk in the door? Because I’m trying to help someone who won’t be helped? Who refuses to even live in the same world as me?”

  “What world is that?” I say.

  “The world where when people die they stay dead.”

  “But he didn’t die,” I say. “That’s the whole point. He’s there, don’t you see?”

  “Jill,” my therapist says, “they found his body. They identified it. They buried him. And they did it thirty-some years ago.”

  “You don’t know anything about this. You haven’t read the books. You don’t—”

  “I’ve read some books—”

  “Some books. Do you know how many there are? Do you know how long it takes to read them all? And what a commitment it is? And the people who wrote these books—do you know the things they were up against, trying to get the truth? You don’t know anything, you don’t know anything about it.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says.

  “Don’t you see?” I ask him. “Don’t you understand that you’ll never know the truth? We’re going to figure out how God made the universe before we figure this out. The people who set this up, you’ll never know. They could release every single document, and we still wouldn’t know. We could get everyone who’s still alive to tell everything they know, and we still wouldn’t know. You could wave a magic wand and have every fact, and you still wouldn’t know it all. They killed the president of the United States of America. And no one will ever know who did it, or why. And to go around acting like you know, acting like Oswald was the only one involved, well, that’s the worst, because that means you just don’t care.”

  “What choice is there, Jill?”

  “Even all these books—they look accurate, and they are written by people who say they want to get to the truth. But maybe they’re lying, too. Maybe they’re part of it. I have a book that says that NASA conspired with former Nazi scientists to kill Kennedy because they knew they couldn’t make it to the moon. I have a book that says the Onassis family did it. I have at least three books about men who say they were the shooter from the grassy knoll. I have a book that says that the Lee Harvey Oswald who went to Russia is not the same Lee Harvey Oswald that came back. And of course you probably know there were lots of Lee Harvey Oswalds running around Dallas and New Orleans during the weeks before the assassination.”

  “Lots of Lee Harvey—”

  “It’s amazing. It’s something they learned about us. Usually, you think of a plot, it’s got to be kept quiet. Only a few people can know about it. But with this one, the more people know about it, the less we know about it. What does that say about us? Do you realize that no other nation in the history of the world would buy the lone-nut theory, and yet every time something happens to one of our leaders, it’s always the work of some lone nut. The lone nut is America’s contribution to political assassination. Well, again, what does that say about us? We don’t live in the real world. We refuse to. We’re afraid of it.”

  “Do you ever see your mother around the neighborhood, Jill?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You see David Ferrie around the neighborhood. He’s dead. I just wonder if you ever see your mother around the neighborhood?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “I’m going to say this one more time. I am not chasing ghosts around the Central West End. I do not see dead people. I see David Ferrie because he is there. He is alive.”

  “What happened to your mother, Jill?”

  15

  David Ferrie is a master of anti-interrogation techniques. David Ferrie is fluent in Latin. David Ferrie may have been one of history’s most important individuals. David Ferrie, in his youth, bowled a perfect game.

  16

  “What happened to your mother, Jill?”

  17

  David Ferrie wanted nothing more in life than to be a Roman Catholic priest. David Ferrie raised orchids. David Ferrie wrote books on motivational tactics. David Ferrie wrote over three hundred sonnets.

  18

  “What happened to your mother, Jill?”

  19

  David Ferrie was a man of apocalyptic visions. David Ferrie painted desert and coastal landscapes. David Ferrie asked for the exact weight of everyone he met. Among David Ferrie’s possessions were a mini Minox camera and a microdot machine. They don’t give those to just anyone.

  20

  “What happened to your mother, Jill?” my therapist says again and again, and suddenly, as if he’s summoned her, she walks into the room. She sits down on the edge of the couch and gently strokes my ankle. My therapist ignores her, says again, like she isn’t even there, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” She smiles.

  At that moment the door to his office opens again, and David Ferrie walks in. My therapist ignores him, too. But it’s not him, not the him I’ve seen on the street, but the younger him, with the crazy orange monkey wig and a Lucky
in his teeth, and he says, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” And then President Kennedy walks in, he’s looking good, no head wound, moving confidently, handsome, and he comes up to David Ferrie, claps him on the back, and turns toward me and says, “What, erh, happened to your mother, Jill?” and then in comes Robert Kennedy, and George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald’s CIA handler, and Guy Banister, Ferrie’s boss, a former FBI man, and Rose Cheramie, a New Orleans prostitute who was thrown from a moving car in Eunice, Louisiana, and told police there all about the assassination two days before it happened, and they all say, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” and Dorothy Kilgallen, the journalist who said she was going to break the case, who was found dead of a “drug overdose” in a Los Angeles hotel room in 1965. Then Jim Garrison and Jack Ruby and even the lone nut himself, Lee Harvey Oswald, and they’re all asking me, and the room is filling up now, people even I don’t know, but still my therapist hasn’t moved from his seat. There’s J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ and Sam Giancana and Earl Warren, and they’re happy to see each other, all glad hands and laughter, and all of them asking over and over, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” like it’s the password for some big club, like it’s some kind of big joke, and then I start screaming, and they’re on me, grabbing and pulling my hair, and I’m fighting, but the whole time they’re asking me what happened to my mother, and the thing is she’s right here, with all of them, killing me, laughing, and just before I go out, I see my reflection in the teeth of John F. Kennedy’s golden smile, and I think to myself that if I can survive this, it’ll be a long time before I tell anyone my secrets again.

  INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

  George and Miranda Putnam have been called to another meeting at their son’s school. It’s hard for Miranda to get off work, but she’s going to be there. For George, it’s no problem, and there’s a part of him that’s glad for something to do. There’s a part of him that’s glad to have another grievance to nurse deep into the night. For Miranda, in this economy, this is all a real inconvenience.

  Because what are they going to learn at this meeting that they didn’t learn at the meeting earlier this school year, or the five meetings last year, or the three the year before that?