The Town Crazy

by Suzzy Roche

  Since then, Clarisse and Steph had become even better friends. Now Stephanie gathered her two boys, Dale and Bobby, and headed across the street. “I’ll meet you out front tomorrow morning,” she called to Clarisse. “You must be excited, the twins’ first day of kindergarten.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Clarisse. “Don’t be surprised if you hear me sniffling.”

  That evening, after the dinner dishes were done and Frank had settled in front of the TV for Bonanza, Clarisse headed upstairs to the twins’ room to prepare them for bed.

  When Clarisse entered their room, she found Fawn standing by her bed, naked, with a blindfold around her eyes and her hands tied behind her, while Dawn jumped on her bed wielding a yardstick.

  “What in the world are you doing?” Clarisse said, rushing over to Fawn to untie her hands.

  “We’re just playing pirates and slaves,” said Dawn.

  “Stop it!” said Clarisse. “I told you before. You’re not to play mean games. Put on your clothes, Fawn, and get off the bed, Dawn.”

  “I hate you!” said Dawn.

  “What?” Clarisse felt as if she’d been slapped in the face.

  “I love you, Mommy,” said Fawn, throwing her arms around her mother.

  Dawn jumped off the bed and ran over to join in the embrace.

  “No, no! Not fair! I love you too, Mommy,” said Dawn. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “There, there. That’s more like it,” said Clarisse, but even as she gathered both girls in her arms, and kissed their foreheads, she wondered what demon had taken hold of her daughter. Over the summer, she’d noticed a change in Dawn.

  THREE

  THE NEXT DAY, as if a switch had been flipped, the air was cooler, and the sun pulsed and glowed in a bright blue sky. Hearts were high as a lazy parade of mothers and children meandered through neighborhood streets, past small blue kiddie pools that had not yet been put away and forgotten bathing suits and towels that still hung on clotheslines stiff and dry. All headed toward Immaculate Conception, the only school in town. The kids wore freshly creased uniforms and brand-new saddle shoes or Hush Puppies and carried leather book bags and brown-bag lunches.

  Clarisse and Steph met in the middle of Mundy Lane and walked with their children trailing behind them. They passed the Chinskys’ house where Hedda Chinsky was on her knees pulling weeds from the shrubbery.

  Old Hedda Chinsky didn’t turn to wave. Some months ago, she and Clarisse had had words when Hedda caught Dawn and Fawn burying a dead frog in her garden.

  “They killed it!” Hedda cried.

  “Oh, Hedda, I doubt that. I’m sure it was already dead when they found it. Little girls don’t go around killing things,” Clarisse had said, and the two women hadn’t spoken since.

  Clarisse and Steph walked in silence until they reached the O’Brien house.

  “Look at that, Lil’s house looks deserted, doesn’t it? She never opens the blinds. I wonder who’s walking Alice to school,” Clarisse said, shaking her head.

  “It scares me, like a haunted house,” said Steph.

  Halfway to school, a spat erupted behind them. Steph’s boys, Dale and Bobby, had a love-hate relationship with the twins.

  “What’s going on? Knock it off!” said Clarisse, turning around to see what the problem was. Dawn was sticking her tongue out at the boys.

  “Dawn kicked me!” said Dale Conte.

  “He licked his finger and rubbed it on my arm!” cried Dawn, taking a swipe at Dale.

  “Oh sweetheart,” said Clarisse to Dale. “Don’t do that, she’ll get your germs.

  “I just don’t want them getting sick, you know?” Clarisse said, turning back to Steph. “I guess the girls are a little overexcited,” she added, under her breath.

  As Clarisse and Steph arrived at the school, they exchanged good mornings with the others who were waiting with their kids for the gates to open. The twins, with their long, white-blonde ponytails tightly braided and adorned with colored bows, drew a crowd of other girls around them. It was nearly impossible to tell the two apart, both had light blue eyes, and celestial noses perfectly proportioned on their faces. They welcomed the attention from the others, holding hands, cute as new dolls, and not in the least bit apprehensive about starting school.

  Beyond the playground, the old stone school loomed, and next to it, the church. Immaculate Conception was a remnant of the past, built way before the new developments in town.

  “Well, look who’s here,” said Clarisse, elbowing Stephanie.

  Luke Spoon was walking down the street holding hands with his son, Felix.

  “What the hell does he do all day?” said Vicki Walsh, who was holding a tissue to her boy’s nose.

  “Well, one thing he doesn’t do is mow his lawn,” said Ginny Rice, who’d just arrived, glistening in tanning lotion, dragging her daughter Nancy by the hand. “I drove by early this morning after I dropped Wilbur at the bus stop. Have you seen the condition it’s in?”

  When Luke Spoon had moved to Hanzloo last spring, he’d rented the old Ross house, which was set back on an empty stretch of the Post Road. The dilapidated house was one of the only homes left in town that wasn’t part of a development. Luke Spoon’s lawn was a low forest of dandelions and other flowery weeds, as if he had something against regular old grass.

  “Look at the way they stand off to the side. It wouldn’t hurt if he said hello to someone,” said Ginny.

  “There’s something sad about him,” said Steph.

  “Let’s face it, the poor guy needs a wife,” said Clarisse, peering over the top of her sunglasses.

  “Why doesn’t one of us march up to him and ask him what happened to his wife?” said Ginny.

  “Now, there’s a thought,” said Clarisse.

  A moment later, the iron gates swung wide, and the emergence of Sister Annunciata, the one-eyed principal, was both a comfort and a call to attention. With a ragged eye-patch stretched across her face, she stood at the playground gates folding her arms into the sleeves of her habit and surveyed the scene. Spotting two fourth graders who were in a tangle, she grabbed them by the backs of their necks, pulling them apart as if they were light as two kittens in a basket. “Next time I’ll bang your heads together,” she said, as the boys straightened up.

  Last spring (according to Teresa Sepolino, Sister A.’s secretary), when Felix Spoon came to school with his father for the first time, the kid had come right out and asked Sister A. what happened to her eye. The nun, putting her face so close that they were nose to nose, had said, “God plucked it out because of something stupid I did.”

  Sister A.’s missing eye, like Luke Spoon’s missing wife, was one more thing to talk about and not get to the bottom of, like an itch in the middle of your back that couldn’t be reached.

  When the school bell rang, the women kissed their kids, some who were reluctant to go through the gates of the playground, preferring instead to wrap their arms around their mothers one last time. But others, like fifth grader Mike Fitzpatrick and his gang of five boys, charged fearlessly through the entrance bouncing a basketball back and forth.

  Felix Spoon stood staring at the ground until his father pulled him into a close embrace and turned him around with a gentle push toward the playground.

  The twins kissed their mother on each cheek and skipped into the playground, followed by a gaggle of adoring girls from every grade.

  At the last minute, Alice O’Brien, all alone, darted across the street, right in front of a passing car that swerved in order to miss her.

  “Slow down!” said Clarisse, calling out to the driver, with her fist raised in the air. She watched as Alice, with snarled hair the color of carrots, trailed behind the other girls. The pleats of her uniform bellowed. No one had bothered to iron them. Clarisse couldn’t help thinking that Lil O’Brien, for all her ethereal beauty, was a lousy mother.

  She watched as Alice tried to attach herself to one set of girls or another. It broke Clari
sse’s heart to see it. She felt it might be time for her to intervene in some way.

  FOUR

  INSIDE THE PLAYGROUND, kids ran wild, and the loud chatter of their voices rose up over the cement. Mike Fitzpatrick and his gang of five were shooting hoops, their white shirts already wrinkled and untucked. On the other side of the playground, Dawn and Fawn enjoyed invitations to join several different jump-rope games, and Alice O’Brien sat on a bench, scratching her legs and fidgeting.

  At exactly 8:42, the church bells rang and every nun, teacher, and child on the playground came to a sudden halt. It was the Angelus, the devotion in honor of the Incarnation—the mystery of the word made flesh—it was expected that everyone would recite three Hail Marys in silence. Father Bruno came out to the balcony of the rectory and stood with his hands clasped over his dark chocolate vestments. In three minutes, the bells rang once more, indicating the close of the Angelus, and the children began to run around again.

  It was then that Mike Fitzpatrick gathered his troops over by the trashcans in the corner of the playground. “Let’s get Felix Spoon over here,” he said. “Give him some of your Chiclets, Joe.”

  “I don’t think he’ll come, he’s a turd,” said Joe Quinn.

  “Just get him over here,” said Mike. “Tell him I want to see him.” Mike stood against the brick wall with his arms crossed, chewing on a toothpick.

  “What are we gonna do with him?” asked Jimmy Ginty.

  “I got a plan,” said Mike.

  Joe Quinn brought Felix over to the boys, who had captured five caterpillars that were crawling around in the garbage.

  “Eat these,” said Mike, thrusting the caterpillars toward Felix.

  “What?” said Felix. “No! Why?”

  Mike grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “I said eat them, dumb-duck.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Felix.

  The boys stood in a close circle as Felix picked up the first caterpillar. He held it up to his eyes. It squirmed in his fingers until he popped it in his mouth and swallowed it whole. He ate the other four, too, as the boys groaned with disgust.

  “Nice,” said Fitzpatrick, “Now, let’s get the girls.”

  Across the playground girls were jumping rope and chanting.

  House for sale, move right in

  The lady upstairs is drinking gin

  The boys set off toward them with Felix at the head of the pack.

  “Felix Spoon ate caterpillars! He ate five whole caterpillars!”

  In an instant jump ropes were dropped, and squealing girls fled from boys. Some of them ran toward the red church door and huddled together, burying their faces in each other’s hair. Felix Spoon headed straight for the McCarthy twins, who stood frozen in the middle of the playground. With his arms outstretched like a zombie, he barreled between them, knocking one of them over. Kids came running from all directions to form a circle around the twins. Dawn had been the one to fall, and she hugged her knee as if it were about to detach from her leg. Fawn sat on the ground beside her sister, crying, with her hair mussed and her uniform askew. Several of the twins’ hair bows lay on the ground, and Dawn’s elbow and knee were scraped. Children stared, some had their hands over their mouths, and some looked downright frightened, as if a star had crashed to earth. Alice O’Brien started to shake as she stood up to see the commotion.

  Felix Spoon pushed through the crowd to see what he had done, and shortly Sister Annunciata bounded across the playground and stepped into the circle. She grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him off to her office, as Mrs. Pell, the school nurse, rushed to attend to the twins.

  ONCE IN her office, the nun latched the door, pulled up two chairs and set them across from each other. She told the boy to sit in one, and she sat in the other, adjusting her rear end on the chair. “So, Felix Spoon,” she said, taking a moment to settle herself. “We meet again. Look here, straight into my eye.” She pointed to her one good eye, and the two sat face to face in silence for quite some time.

  The boy examined the nun closely. The sister’s eye was gray as a cloud, and although he found it mesmerizing, he couldn’t look at it for very long because the rest of her was so intriguing. She appeared to him like a bad person in a fairy tale, but he was not afraid. Her giant rosary beads, which usually swung from her black woven belt, sat in her lap, and she held its crucifix with thick knobby fingers. Her shoes, poking out from her heavy underskirts, were like black mounds, and their heels were worn on one side. A musty smell emanated from her robes, and her wrinkled forehead seemed pinched under the starched white coif, which sat like a cupcake box under her long black veil. She had a perfectly awful face, lined and puffed with age, an extra-large nose, and the wondrous black eye patch that was frayed on one edge.

  Finally, the nun spoke. “I’m glad you’re taking the time to look me over, young man, because I’ve been watching you for quite some time,” she said, leaning toward him. “I want you to listen to me very carefully.” She pointed at him with her bent index finger. “Who do you think you are?”

  After a moment, the boy responded thoughtfully, “I think I’m like you, and one of my eyes might be torn out, or something bad like that.”

  “Interesting answer,” she said, slapping her hands on her lap. “Is that what you’re waiting for? Something bad to happen to you?”

  The boy looked to the floor. “I’m waiting for my mother.” Outside, the church bells rang three times, and Sister Annunciata sighed.

  “I see,” she said eyeing Felix’s untied sneakers. “And where is your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” he said crossly. Then, softening, he looked up at the nun. “Do you know where she is?”

  The nun sneezed unexpectedly and took out her cloth handkerchief. She blew her nose with a honk. “Felix, let me tell you something,” she said, wiping her nose. “There’s no excuse for eating caterpillars and knocking down little girls.” She folded the hanky and stuffed it back into the inner regions of her habit.

  Tears bubbled up in Felix Spoon’s eyes. “I didn’t mean it. Sometimes I have to do things. Tell me, what is my punishment?”

  She took a moment to watch as he cleared his eyes with his fists. “Well, I’d say that eating caterpillars is its own punishment, wouldn’t you?”

  The boy seemed surprised. A glimmer of a smile swept across both their faces, as if they shared a certain sense of humor. “I feel bad for the caterpillars,” said Felix, and once again his eyes welled up.

  “But what about the girls? Don’t you feel bad for them? One of them has a scraped knee. Hurting people is a dead end, Felix. Don’t you know that? You must apologize. You have to go to them and say you’re sorry. And you have to be sincere.”

  “Not fair,” he mumbled, banging the floor with his foot. “They deserve it. I’ll tell you what, they killed a frog by stabbing it with sticks.”

  Sister A.’s nostrils opened wide. “That’s gruesome,” she said.

  “And I saw one of them kick someone in my class. A girl named Alice. She’s easy to pick on. Everybody thinks the twins are cute, but they’re mean.”

  The nun considered that. “Regardless. Apologize, Felix, you’ll feel better. And do it soon. Much can be accomplished with the words I’m sorry. Now, look, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you something, and I want you to be very careful with it.” Sister Annunciata once again reached into the folds of her mysterious black robes and pulled out a small gray stone. She held it in her open palm. “Will you keep this for me?” she said.

  The boy looked at it and said, “Why? It’s nothing but a rock.”

  “Is that what you think?” said the nun. “Here, hold it in your hand.”

  Felix took the rock and examined it. “It’s warm,” he said, looking up at the sister’s eye.

  “I’m not surprised. It was in my hidden pocket. It comes from God’s cave,” she said. “Will you keep it for me?”

  “God’s cave? That sounds bad, I didn’t k
now he had a cave,” said Felix.

  “You might be surprised. There are some interesting things in God’s cave. Now will you keep the rock for me?” said the sister, adjusting the patch on her eye.

  “Why should I?” asked the boy, disappointed in the rock.

  “That’s not my business. I simply asked.” The two stared each other down. “So?” said the nun.

  “I guess,” said Felix, looking at the stone.

  “Is that a promise?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Don’t you know what a promise is?”

  “It’s something that you say you’ll do,” he said.

  “Has someone made a promise to you that they haven’t kept?”

  “No difference if they have or haven’t,” said Felix.

  “A broken promise is hard to take,” said the sister.

  “I don’t care,” he said, twisting his mouth.

  “On the other hand, sometimes you have to wait for a very long time for a promise to be kept.” The boy sat without a word. “I wonder who you are, Felix Spoon. Do you know that I’m fond of you?”

  “It doesn’t help. You’re strange. You only have one eye,” said Felix.

  “That’s not nice. Just like you, I know what it feels like to be set apart,” said the sister. “The more important issue is that now I’ve given you a gift, and you can go back to your class. We’ll see what you do with it.”

  Felix shrugged. “Is it magic?”

  “No, like you said, it’s nothing but a rock.”

  The boy studied the old nun’s face and thought for a moment. “Sister, may I see your empty socket?”

  The nun smiled, and Felix was surprised to see that one of her teeth was golden. “Why would you ask such a thing?” she said.