“But I feel like Mama and Daddy, well, I don’t know, I feel like they’re going to be strangers to me, and I, Elizabeth, will be a stranger to them. A stranger in my own house.”
Delores laughs. Well, she laughs as much as possible with such a hoarse voice.
“Going and coming from here,” she says, “it’s kind of like a twilight zone. Eerie, isn’t it?”
“Yes!” I say, so glad she has said exactly what I am feeling. “Yes! And do you feel like you’re standing back watching yourself? Like right now, it seems like I’m another person standing here watching my hands fold these gowns and put them in my bag. It’s weird, Delores! Am I crazy, or what?”
We both laugh. “If you were crazy, you wouldn’t be talking like this,” she says. “You’re going to be fine, Elizabeth. I’m so happy for you.”
“But, Delores, how long are you going to be here?” All of a sudden I can really talk with Delores, now that I’m leaving, I can talk. “Will you ever get to talking again? What are you going to do? What happened?”
Delores puts both hands around her throat. “Dr. Johnstone is thinking there may be a physical problem, not a psychological one. Especially since I haven’t had any traumatic thing to deal with.”
It might not be nice, but now was the time to find out if what Hemp had told me was the truth. So, I tried to say it as kind as possible. “Poor Hemp,” I say, “I never knew what to believe with him. But he said something about you lost your voice when you were about to get married.”
Delores just smiles, shaking her head, smiling at the memory of Hemp. “Hemp liked to tell tall tales, didn’t he? I miss him so much.”
Oh, Hemp. Why did you have to go and kill yourself? You were such a joy. Did you know that? Did you know that you were a joy to most everyone around you? You made us laugh. Couldn’t you see that? Should we have told you that we needed you here to make us laugh? Should we have shown you in some way how much we appreciated your silly jokes and your corny stories? Would you have still been here today if we had told you these things?
“Delores, what was wrong with Hemp? He seemed so happy. He seemed the last person in the world to have to be here.”
Delores shrugs. “Who knows? Once, he said this girl he was going to marry left him at the altar, and since he really didn’t want to get married, it made him so happy he became hysterical and he couldn’t get over being so happy, so he came here. Then he said that both his parents died in a plane crash, and since he didn’t like them anyway, that made him so happy he came here. Then, there was the story about him having two children and putting them in the stove to cook them, and—”
I held up my hand. I didn’t want to hear more. “I see,” I say.
Maybe Miss Cannon was right. Maybe this is a spooky place. Anyway, I am at last feeling a little glimmer of gladness to be leaving.
But then Delores pulls one on me. “Elizabeth, maybe this isn’t appropriate; but I’ve always wondered why you were here. To me, you seem like nothing’s wrong. At least you don’t show it.”
Here all this time, I thought it was written all over me the confusion and the turmoil I’ve been going through inside. I thought I was like a clear pane of glass and that everyone could look and see right through me. So, what can I say?
“I was just trying to be somebody else, Delores. Somebody else, and not me. And there wasn’t anyone I could talk with about it. Except Aunt Lona. But then I got so down, so depressed, I couldn’t even talk with her. And after I came here, I found out I really couldn’t even count on having the same people around to talk to all the time, so . . . well, I guess I found out there’s no one else left. Except me. I, Elizabeth.”
By the way Delores looks, I can tell that didn’t explain things to her satisfaction. But how can you explain yourself to someone else? Can you ever tell someone how you really and truly feel? I don’t know, anymore, I just don’t know. Anyway, I don’t have time to be thinking on that, since Miss Hansom comes in to help pick up my clothes, what few I had.
“You’ll write to me, of course,” Miss Hansom says, “and let me know the college you decide on.”
“I have to come back in a month to see Dr. Johnstone, so I can see you then,” I say. But the way I’m feeling now, I know I will never come back to see him again.
“Dr. Johnstone may not be here,” she says, “he may be leaving.”
“No love lost,” I say, without even stopping to think.
“It’s about time,” Delores says, right at the same time.
I look at Delores. She looks at me. “Are we thinking the same thing for the same reason?” I say.
Miss Hansom answers for us. “No doubt.”
At that, since I was standing right in the middle of both of them, I just automatically and without a moment’s hesitation throw my arms around both of them. “I am so glad!” I say. “I thought it was just me. I am so glad!”
“I thought it was just me, too,” Delores said, “until I mentioned his, uh, ‘little therapy request’ to Miss Hansom.”
“Sex is definitely not therapy,” Miss Hansom says. “Not with your analyst, anyway. Maybe with your husband.” And we all laugh.
“Well, there goes my therapy,” I say. And we all laugh again. And it feels so good to be talking so easy with two of the most gracious women I’ve ever met about a subject that I once couldn’t talk about with anyone. What feels even better is hugging them again, in my good-byes, and have it be a perfectly normal, natural feeling. I look at them and I think about what I’m doing. And it is okay. It is good.
“I promise I’ll write to you, Delores. I do want to keep in touch.”
Delores hugs me, her eyes misting over. “Be good to yourself, Elizabeth. You have so much to give to others. But, be good to yourself, first.”
“My turn,” says Miss Hansom, giving me her good-bye hug. “I may not be on this floor, when you come back,” she says, “but I’ll be on one of them, so you can find me, and fill me in on your plans. Promise?”
I have no idea what kind of plans I’ll be filling her in on. All I know is I have to get away from Littleton. And I wish I could bypass it and go straight to the college wherever I am going, but until I can settle in on what school I’ll be going to, I’ll have to make the best of things at home, like Belinda, and somehow she has helped give me the courage and the strength to do it.
I go to find Belinda, who is playing Ping-Pong with Lenny. Lenny is smiling his slight bit of a smile. Maybe Belinda will help him talk. Maybe Belinda won’t mind if he puts his hands on her breasts. Maybe that will help get her mind off her daddy and brothers and sisters and housework. And maybe her breasts will inspire him to start talking. Go to it, Lenny and Belinda. Go to it.
I find it quite easy to give Belinda a good-bye hug, probably because she just kind of falls into my arms, as if she’ll take all the hugs she can get. But it is a little harder to hug Lenny, mainly, I think, because he is so very shy about it. But I manage, in spite of his shyness.
“Lenny, you take care of Belinda. Belinda, you take care of Lenny. Okay?” They go right back to playing Ping-Pong, as if they are the only two people in the world.
Mrs. Krieger, Alice, Tommy, and Harold are in group therapy. It’s just as well I don’t see anybody else before I leave. I’ve had enough mixed-up, good-bye feelings for one day, even though they are mostly warm sunshine kind of feelings.
“Your mother should be waiting for you in the lobby,” Miss Hansom says. “This is your prescription, if you find you need it.”
“I still can’t believe she offered to come down and get me,” I say. “I just can’t believe it.” It is certainly turning out to be true, what Aunt Lona said about if you change, then people around you have to change, too, in some way.
I fold the little white piece of prescription paper and stick it in my pocketbook. For a moment I see little brown, plastic pill bottles encircling the walkway, planted alongside Mama’s magnesia bottles. I determine to myself that I won’t ne
ed the prescription. Whatever and however I feel, I won’t need it. Not ever. Not I, Elizabeth.
When we get to the green door with the little red exit sign above it, that song comes back to me again, you know the one about this guy coming to a green door and hearing lots of laughing and piano playing behind it and he was wanting so much for them to let him in so he could find out what was behind the green door? Well, I, for one, have found out what’s behind the green door, and if I told that man who wrote that song, I’d probably disappoint him, because, even though people may be playing the piano and laughing and dancing behind the green door, there’s no more joy and happiness there than anywhere else. And when you come right down to it, there’s gonna be pain and suffering no matter which side of the door you’re on, as long as you’ve got people just being people in the only way they know how.
My stomach is fluttering. Miss Hansom gives me yet another hug “good-bye,” and I step into the elevator. I am so elated that Mama is coming for me. After calling Aunt Lona to come and get me, she asked why didn’t I at least give Mama the opportunity to come. So, I decided what the heck, and took a far-out chance that Mama might find it in her heart somewhere to come on and get me. Maybe she would be glad enough about me coming back home, that she’d be happy to come down. Well, not happy. But at least maybe she’d do it. Even though I’m nervous at being closed up with her in the car for three hours, I’m glad she said she’d come down. Even though she won’t come up to talk with any doctor around, she’ll at least pick me up. Maybe that’s a good sign. Of what, I don’t know.
I step out of the elevator into the lobby full of people sitting, looking like they’ve been waiting forever. I search all around everywhere, looking for Mama. But I don’t see Mama anywhere. Who I see, instead, is Sheriff Tate.
21
. . . . . .
Sheriff Tate. Every good and kind thought I’ve had about Mama for the past six weeks just flies right out of me, and there is nothing but anger boiling up in its place. Anger, the cover-up feeling. But no time for hunting down that covered-up feeling. Just time to run back to the elevator, go back up to eighth floor, and stay at Nathan forever. No. Just time to run out the door, and go Lord knows where, anywhere besides to Littleton with Sheriff Tate. Just time to slow down out on the sidewalk, my heart beating like rocks banging inside it. Just time to think who to go to—Miss Hansom? No. Just time to be strong, be I, Elizabeth, in charge. Just time to slow down, take it easy, walk, not run. Just time to slip into the Indoors-Outdoors Cafe, sit down, and think what to do. Just time to order a lemonade and think, Elizabeth, think, think, what the real and true I, Elizabeth, woman, would do.
But just as I am drawing in the first sips of my sweet lemonade, the doors to the cafe swing open, and in stalks Sheriff Tate, just like he’s a big-time marshall, for heaven’s sakes, swaggering into some western saloon. I, Elizabeth, will pay no attention to him, will not even look at him, will not even know he’s on the place. No. That’s what Angela would do. Angela would pretend. Angela would play around like that. Elizabeth, real and true, will face up to him, will at least acknowledge that he’s here, will have to be a woman, no matter how she feels.
At my booth Sheriff Tate doesn’t sit down right away. He just stands there, looking down on me. I can feel it, feel his eyes burning holes in me they are so scorching hot. I’d a thousand times rather be Jesus on the cross with nails hammered into me, than have Sheriff Tate staring me down this way. At least Jesus had people all around looking up to Him, not down on Him, and at least they were crying out for Him. I, Elizabeth, have no one. Except I, Elizabeth. And that has to be enough. If only Angela could come out and start crying, maybe the stalker would go away and leave me alone. But Angela is dead and buried and I have to keep her that way.
Sheriff Tate slinks down into the seat across the table. “Well, now,” he says, “Elizabeth’s done gone and got her a new way of looking. Whaddya know about that.”
For one split second my eyes flit up from my lemonade, long enough to see he still has his hat on.
“S’ does that mean Elizabeth’s got her a new way of acting, too? With this straight hair and, look at that, pink fingernails? My, my. What’d they do to Elizabeth down here?”
Although his creepiness gets next to my skin, I know I’m not afraid of him, just mad. Mad at him, yeah, but mostly at Mama. So, it is madness I have to deal with, not fear. I draw a long swallow of lemonade, and then with all the woman I can muster up inside me, I say, “Real men remove their hats at the table.”
From downright sleaziness to upright coolness, that’s how Sheriff Tate turns in a matter of seconds. “Well, now, I reckon that depends on who you are, now, don’t it? Besides, real women don’t have to come down here to Nathan, now do they?”
For the first time ever, I do believe, I look Sheriff Tate straight in the eyes. I just look. Pure and simple, look at him. “People come to Nathan, sir, so they can get real.”
“So they made you real, huh? Made you into a real little bitch?”
“Excuse me,” I say, sliding out of the booth. The real woman Elizabeth may have to face Sheriff Tate, but she doesn’t have to put up with such talk as that from nobody, not even a so-called officer of the law.
As I walk out of the cafe, he walks behind me, and I can feel his eyes on me staring me down, as I go looking for a phone.
“What’re you doing?” he says, catching up with me, as I step into a phone booth and slam the door shut. Even though I slam the door, I’m not feeling all that mad anymore. It’s like I have already been as mad as I can possibly get, and I can’t get any madder, and the only other possible thing to do is just to put all my feelings in neutral and my actions on automatic so I can do what has to be done to get myself back to Littleton in one piece.
I put in the nickel, dial the number, wait, and listen to the phone ring and ring and ring. I hope and I pray with all my heart that Aunt Lona will be at home. Please, please, answer the phone, Aunt Lona. Please. But the phone keeps on ringing and ringing and ringing. Until I slam the receiver down.
So, what now? I think about calling home to talk with Daddy and see if he knows where Aunt Lona is. But Mama will answer, and I just can’t talk to Mama right now. Not even to say three words. So I just lean back against the door, and watch the cars, the taxis, the buses, the trucks, I just stay leaned back for a while, thinking, what to do. Will I have to hitch a ride home?
“Are you coming outa there, or not?” Sheriff Tate demands. “I don’t have time to wait around here all day, you know.” He goes on and on, ranting and pacing, ranting and pacing, and when I get good and tired of it, I open up the door.
“Well, just don’t you wait, okay?”
“What in hell you mean?”
“What ‘in hell’ I mean is just you go on,” I say, swooshing my hand at him. “Just,” swoosh, “go,” swoosh, “on,” swoosh. “That’s what I mean.”
“You mean to say I come all the way down here, and you ain’t even going back home?”
“Not with you, Sheriff Tate. I’m going. But not with you.”
“Now, I done got orders from your mama to come bring you home, and, if I have to,” he says, jingling his handcuffs. “If I have to. . .”
“Uh, excuse me,” I say. “You take orders from my mama, Sheriff Tate? My mama? I, Elizabeth, don’t even take orders from my mama. And you, Sheriff Tate, I didn’t think you took orders from nobody. Least that’s what you always say.” After walking around him, looking him up and down, giving him the once-over, just like the Orange Nurse had given me the once-over in the nude, I finally stop and stare him in the face. “You. . . orders from Mama,” I say, trancelike. “God help you, Sheriff Tate. God help you.”
I pick up Daddy’s army satchel and start back toward Alexander T. Syms Memorial Hospital, the tallest building around. I’ll just stay there in the lobby until I can get Aunt Lona on the phone. But just as I reach the hospital, a taxi wheels in, a well-suited man gets out, whisks
away, and the driver calls out to me. “Need a ride, miss?”
“Yes, I do, but, where are you going?”
“Anywhere you wanna go.”
“Anywhere?” I say, wondering at the glory and the freedom sounding in that one little word, “anywhere.”
“Well, I need to go to Littleton, but that’s too far for you . . .”
“Never heard of it,” he says. “You taking the bus, maybe, the train? I can take you either place.”
The bus sounds far better than the train, and although there isn’t a bus station in Littleton, still the buses went through, and they could stop anywhere, couldn’t they, if somebody needed to get off just anywhere?
At the bus depot I try so hard to look like I know what I am doing, like I know where I am going, but I’m sure people can take one look and see “lost” written all over me. Especially the man behind the ticket window. He, too, has never heard of Littleton.
“What’s it near?” he says, chewing around on a smelly cigar.
“Near, uh, Pine Creek?” I say. “Up in the mountains?”
“We can get ’ya to Sleepy Hollow,” he said. “Close enough?”
“Sure,” I say, reaching into my pocketbook, “that’s not far from Littleton, thirty miles, probably.”
“Al-l-right, little lady,” the cigar man says, tossing an orange ticket onto the counter, and my heart sinks when I see the price.
I start to tell him I am “Elizabeth,” not “little lady.” But I only have three dollars and a quarter to my name, and I figure I’ll get further with him by playing nice.
I glance over my shoulder and around to see if anyone is watching, or listening, but they aren’t. “I don’t have that much money,” I whisper.
The cigar man clamps his teeth real hard, bites off a tiny piece of his cigar butt, and spits it toward the trash can.
“Look,” I say, “I just got out of the hospital. I didn’t bring all that much money with me. I wasn’t counting on riding a bus home. I can mail you the rest, okay?”
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