The Town Crazy

by Suzzy Roche

  “Here’s what I think. Felix Spoon is demented. Little Alice, good Lord, what next?” Clarisse was saying.

  Steph noticed that Clarisse often referred to Alice as “little” Alice, and to Lil as “poor” Lil. She suspected that her diminishing adjectives had less to do with compassion and more to do with the fact that Clarisse had no jurisdiction over Lil O’Brien. Steph took it upon herself to play devil’s advocate, knowing that Teresa might not be so inclined to stand up to Clarisse. She put her cookie down.

  “Okay, I agree this is disturbing, and, yes, the kid is an oddball, but what did you actually see, Teresa?”

  Teresa bit her bottom lip, and concentrated, as if it were a trick question on a quiz. “Well, I walked in … the two of them were under the table … very, very close,” she said, putting her hands together like a prayer. “The boy ran … shouting to Alice, ‘don’t be stupid’ and by the time I fished her out from under the table, she was … you know … shaking, and speechless. And when I asked her what they were doing, she wouldn’t tell. She just said, ‘he showed me something.’ So, I don’t know, but it didn’t feel right.”

  “That’s an understatement,” said Clarisse, who shuddered as if she had just pictured a car crash in her head. “Poor Lil is in no condition to handle something like this,” Clarisse said.

  When further pressed by Steph, Teresa said she couldn’t quite be sure about what actual touching had occurred, and that’s when Clarisse jumped in.

  “Please, Steph. We get that it was something sexual, no need to mince around. We have to move on this. That boy is trouble. I mean, come on … he’s already hurt my girls and now this. Honestly, I don’t care much for the father, either.”

  The women got quiet.

  Steph crossed her arms and smiled ever so slightly at Clarisse. “Really?”

  “Look, Teresa, thanks for telling us about this. We’ll think about a plan of action.” Clarisse stood up, putting an abrupt end to Teresa’s visit and ushering her to the door as fast as she could.

  “I thought you said Luke Spoon was the perfect gentleman when he came to apologize,” said Steph after Teresa left.

  Clarisse pursed her lips and took a moment to pull at an eyelash. “I don’t know. I’ve had a few days to think about it, and, so what, he can turn on the charm. Something about him gives me the creeps,” said Clarisse. “You can’t just do nothing in a case like this, Steph. Come on. I feel I should step up.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t really think there’s enough evidence here.”

  “Oh, so we should wait until he goes further than showing? How about touching?” said Clarisse.

  “Clarisse, he’s seven years old!” Stephanie Conte didn’t buy it. Clarisse had done a flip-flop. When Clarisse had called her saying that Luke Spoon had paid her a visit, you would have thought he was Paul Newman or something. But she was on the warpath now, and Steph was reminded of the time Clarisse had almost driven the Witters out of town with her campaign to ostracize them because they’d painted their house red, which according to Clarisse looked like something you’d find on a whore’s lips.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” said Steph.

  “I’m going to think about it, Steph. I’ll figure something out. But I really wish you’d be with me on this. I could use your support.”

  EIGHT

  WORK WAS SLOW. Callahan was out of the office. Hallelujah. Jim O’Brien despised Callahan, and the feeling was probably mutual. Callahan—Joseph C—had waltzed out of Rutgers into the executive spot that Jim had been bowing and scraping for the last five years.

  Gleason Brothers Department Store: Wow, Callahan, he sometimes thought, you really made your parents proud. These snide remarks he kept to himself, though they rolled around in his mind all day.

  Taking advantage of the fact that his boss was out for the day, Jim meandered down the hall for a third cup of coffee.

  “I’ll be right back, Dinah,” he said to the secretary he shared with Mike Wilson.

  “That’s fine,” said Dinah, as if he’d asked for permission. It often looked to Jim like she’d just gotten out of bed. Who wears a hairnet to work? She was efficient, but also fond of pointing out Jim’s sloppy mistakes. “Are you sure you want to phrase it this way?” she’d say, exuding disbelief.

  He made his way down the aisle. Those secretaries who were not at their metal desks were in their boss’s offices; he could see them through the windows, sitting with their legs crossed, holding dictation pads. Others were at their typewriters, the tick, tick, tick of their fingers on the keys reassuring everyone in a numbing sort of a way.

  “Hi Sue,” he said to a young woman who looked up from her work up as he passed. She wore glasses on the tip of her nose.

  She smiled at him, but just barely.

  The office, on the fifth floor of Gleason’s, had a hardwood floor, and its gray walls, as if to inspire and encourage nothing, were bare. At the end of the hall of desks, a small lounge for coffee had an orange, pseudoleather couch and a couple of mismatched chairs.

  Jim stirred sugar into his coffee, picked up a copy of the Reader’s Digest that was sitting on the coffee table, and idly thumbed through the magazine, when an article caught his eye.

  EXPLAINING WHAT A HUSBAND Is

  In the first place, make your husband feel that you like him. Well, hey, thought Jim, what a concept. The look on your face when your husband comes home from work may be the most important expression in your marriage. There are women who do all their chores and fulfill every household responsibility and yet their husbands don’t feel liked. Chances are that, when you marry, you may have to give up some career or ambition. If you’re going to make your husband feel guilty because he robbed the world of a great talent—don’t marry.

  Jim couldn’t believe what he was reading. Whoever wrote this article had really tapped into something. He skipped down a few paragraphs.

  A man may want to make love because he is romantic, happy, sad, frightened, angry, cheerful, in despair, or restless. Don’t resent it. You can be happy with this browbeaten beast, this vulgar bozo, this oversensitive tyrant. Make an effort to understand him.

  Jim could just hear Lil making fun of something like this, but he felt like erecting a statue to the author. What ever happened to respect for your husband? Wasn’t there something you could expect from your wife? Maybe he was too easy on her.

  Jim marched back to his desk and called Doctor Garufee. At first the doctor was reluctant to talk to him. “Look, there’s confidentiality between a doctor and his patient. You understand that, right Jim?”

  “I know, but these drugs she’s on, they’re just not working. She’s acting crazy. Last week I found her standing in the walk-in closet in the dark. My daughter needs a mother, and frankly, I need a wife.”

  “I understand,” said Dr. Garufee. “This kind of thing is tricky, though. Sometimes it takes time to find the right combination of pills; women can be extremely sensitive. You have to be patient, but firm. She’s been through a lot.”

  What had she been through, Jim wondered? She’d barely been off Mundy Lane.

  “Let’s wait until the appointment and see how things go. Hang in there.”

  Jim had hung in, but he had a hard time believing his wife couldn’t just snap out of it. And forget about sex. Whereas he couldn’t say they’d ever had a raucous sex life—he’d always had to approach Lil on tenterhooks—now it had completely gone out the window. He had needs. For God’s sake, he was reduced to sleeping in the cellar like a dog.

  Ten minutes after his conversation with Garufee, he picked up the phone again and dialed Kay Book’s extension. Kay worked in the billing department.

  “Howdy, Kay,” he said.

  “Hello, Mr. O’Brien,” said Kay.

  “I was thinking about Flapdogs after work. You free?

  “I guess I’m free,” said Kay.

  “You don’t sound so sure,” said Jim.

  Kay sighed. “No, okay, tha
t’s sounds fine.”

  “No pressure of course. I mean, if you’ve got something else to do.”

  “I’ll be there, Mr. O’Brien,” said Kay.

  Jim hung up. She seemed tired of him already. How did that happen?

  What the hell, it wasn’t against the law to have a drink. Jim had absolutely no interest in Kay, a pudgy twenty-year-old with a loud annoying laugh, who sucked on Salem cigarettes, leaving red lipstick on their tips, sometimes filling up a whole ashtray during happy hour.

  Jim told himself he wasn’t going to call her anymore, but increasingly, around four o’clock in the afternoon, his hand, as if it had a mind of its own, reached for the phone, and in an hour, he’d find himself shoulder to shoulder with Kay Book at good old Flapdogs. Listening to her complain about the other girls in billing wasn’t so bad as long as he could sail away down Martini Lane. Sometimes he’d watch the cigarette smoke bellow out of her mouth and think, just wait until your life really falls apart. You have no idea what lies ahead, little girl.

  No one seemed to realize what was happening to him. If he’d cracked into a thousand pieces and fell underneath his desk, he suspected they’d say, “Hey, is that a pile of dirt on the floor, or is it Jim O’Brien? And by the way, who cares?”

  Interestingly Clarisse McCarthy was the only human being who had asked him how he was doing lately. Over the last few weeks, she’d taken to calling him; drawing him out, telling him he could lean on her if he needed to.

  It was tricky because Lil didn’t like her, but he had to admit it felt good to have the feeling that someone cared, and Clarisse McCarthy was Clarisse McCarthy. Jim slipped the Reader’s Digest into his briefcase and headed over to Flapdogs.

  He had to pass by Dinah’s desk when he left, and she looked up as he snuck by. “It’s only ten to five,” she said, glancing at her watch.

  “Well, whoop-de-do,” said Jim. “You know, Dinah, you might want to think about the fact that I’m the boss, not the other way around.”

  She looked away as if he were an annoying five-year-old who had just said, “Poop.”

  NINE

  SINCE LUKE SPOON moved to Hanzloo, correspondence with the world had thinned considerably, but he still ventured out to check his mail. Outside the parameters of the recently built developments, the Ross house, weathered and drafty, stood alone on the Old Post Road, back from the street. Spoon had loved the place immediately. He liked to think of himself as the kind of guy who would live in a house like this; one without a manicured lawn, one that sat smack in the middle of a chaotic field.

  Still relieved to get out of the city and its galleries full of red-faced, wine-swilling bigmouths who blew smoke from cigarette holders in each other’s faces, Luke was in no hurry to leave Hanzloo. He’d had enough of the art scene for the time being. Nature was the real art gallery, and all his old friends would have to agree, although none of them would be caught dead here.

  His stretch of the Post Road was deserted, though a quarter mile away the strip mall loomed, complete with an A&P. Still, he didn’t have to worry about neighbors looking in the windows. He could walk around in nothing if he wanted to, but, somehow, he never did.

  Midmorning, the mailman came by in what looked to Luke like a toy truck for a man; it had big wheels and one door, with just enough space in the back for the mail sack. Luke waited until the mail truck pulled away and drove down the road before walking out. He wondered what that must be like for a grown man to wear a uniform. Luke hadn’t worn a uniform since his school days at Holy Angels for Boys, in Indiana, where he was born.

  The sun slipped behind a passing cloud as Luke stepped on to his porch. Autumn was nearing, a shadow moved across the lawn, and a few yellow leaves scurried over the grass, like crabs on a beach. He pulled the collar of his jacket up like a guy in a magazine might do. Who was he posing for? Solitude was supposed to bring peace, but he tortured himself about everything. Still, today he congratulated himself on staying out of trouble in Hanzloo. So far. His run-in with Clarisse McCarthy on Mundy Lane the other day swerved dangerously close to reckless. Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown his drink on her floor.

  At the curb, along with some forwarded mail from his manager—invitations to art openings that he’d just toss out—Luke was surprised to find an actual letter in the box, and he pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket to get a better look. The address, comprised of letters cut from magazines and newspapers, had been pasted on a plain white envelope. He ran his fingers across the letters and felt where the glue had crusted. No return address. Weird.

  Sliding his thumb under the flap of the envelope, he unfolded a single sheet of paper. The words on the page, also glued, letter by letter, bore no relation to each other in size and style; some were larger than others, some in script, some lowercase, and some were bold and capital.

  The sticky, crooked sentence on the page resembled a child’s art project, and briefly he thought Felix had managed to send it, but as he read, it was clear that someone else had cooked this up.

  The message was ominous:

  Your son molested Alice O’Brien at school.

  Get out of Hanzloo.

  Luke stared at the letter with his mouth open. What the hell? Was this somebody’s idea of a joke? Get out of Hanzloo?

  He walked back from the mailbox and sat down on the stoop with the opened letter in his hand, paranoid that he was being watched. Lowering his glasses to the tip of his nose, he looked up and down the street but saw no people and no cars either. One lone bird flew in the distant sky, small as a dot, and the stillness of Hanzloo, which moments earlier had seemed comforting, now spooked him. He went back into the house and closed the front door, even turning the lock-something he hadn’t done since moving in—and sat at the kitchen table with his chin in his hand.

  The word molested—he had to think for a moment—what did it actually mean? No way it could be true. Could a child molest? What a mess this could be.

  For one brief moment, Luke allowed himself to consider the possibility that it was true, that somehow what he’d always recognized as Felix’s singleness was instead a kind of trouble that had twisted in a deeply disturbing way. It seemed inconceivable that Felix could hurt anyone, but maybe he was wrong.

  He moved over to the kitchen sink, intending to wash out his coffee cup, but instead put his hands on the edge of the counter and stared out the kitchen window beyond the treetops, to the clouds that rolled back in the sky, and thought despairingly of Joni, as if he might find her there. Where the hell was she? He allowed the longing to wash over him, hopefully to pass quickly. His nightly dreams were full of her. He missed her, and the boy must, too. But at the moment, he was pissed at her all over again.

  THAT NIGHT, in their tiny Greenwich Village studio, he’d found it amusing, the way she stood in her bra, and the man’s trousers she’d been wearing lately—her black hair cropped short as a boy’s—smoking a Camel through a red and gold cigarette holder. Sweat glistened on her forehead and above her lip; her cheeks were ruddy from the whiskey and the heat. Joni put her glass to her lips and threw her head back, taking a big gulp that ended in an openmouthed aaaah.

  “The way people are in those little towns? They’ll squash Felix.” She flicked her ashes on the floor, one hand on her hip.

  “I spoke to your mother—”

  “My mother! Spare me! I don’t want to hear about my mother. You think my mother is going to solve this? You really are stuck in the Catholic crap, aren’t you? It’s like you’re still an altar boy. How could you even think about putting him in a Catholic school! Is this what you want?” she said, hitting her chest with her palm. “Cause this is what you just might get!”

  Old Ruth Plough, in the apartment below them, banged on her ceiling with a blunt object, and without thinking, Joni grabbed the broom from where it hung on a nail on the wall and pounded the handle on the floor three times.

  “Come on, Joni,” said Luke. “Knock it off.”

 
; “Mark my words, Felix will not survive Hanzloo. I know what kind of town that is.”

  “You don’t know, you really don’t. Look, I need to get away from New York for a while. I’m sick of it. We need to regroup, settle down a bit. I’ll get down to work. And Joni, you’re out of control.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Luke. I’m not going with you. What I have to get away from is you. You can keep pretending that you’re not who you are, living this starving-artist myth. You’re successful, Luke. Why can’t you get that into your head? You think just because you live in a little dump in the Village means you don’t have to admit you have money? You can’t run away from New York. Be who you are! But I’m not successful. I’m just a bigmouthed nobody, and I can’t hang off the end of your arm forever.

  “That’s not true. What about Felix? You’re a mother, Joni. A mother doesn’t leave her child.” I thought we were a family.”

  “What’s a family?” she said under her breath. “Maybe a mother does leave, maybe a mother should leave from time to time. I’m going to Paris with Mariana, and that’s that. I’ll never have this chance again.” She pointed at him. “But I love my boy, you know I love my boy. And don’t you tell him otherwise.”

  “Mariana is an accident waiting to happen.”

  “She’s an artist, Luke, she actually spends time painting. You should try that. Ever since you became a hotshot, you haven’t picked up a brush.”

  That was true, and that alone was a good enough reason to get out of New York.

  “You need some time away? I need some time away,” said Joni. “We’ll assess things when I get back. Besides, Felix has you. You’re as much of a mother as I am. Why does the woman always have to be the mother?”

  LATER THAT afternoon, having obsessed about the anonymous letter for hours, Luke buried it under some pants and shirts in the back of his dresser drawer, as if it were a dirty magazine, and left the house to pick up Felix from school.