The Town Crazy

by Suzzy Roche

  “Felix Spoon.”

  “Yes. What happened there?” said Lil.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something must have happened.”

  “No,” said Alice.

  “Why can’t you tell me?” asked Lil, sitting up. She lifted Alice’s chin with her palm and looked into her eyes.

  “I promised,” said Alice, and her bottom lip quivered a bit.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had to swear I wouldn’t tell,” said Alice.

  “But I’m your mother, doesn’t that count for anything?” asked Lil.

  “I guess.” Alice thought about Felix Spoon and how he’d pointed at her eyes. It could be that something bad would happen if she told about the rock.

  Lil pulled Alice into her embrace and Alice allowed herself to rest there for a moment until Lil took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You can tell me things, you know.”

  “I can’t Mom … please don’t make me.”

  “Did he hurt you? Or threaten you?” said Lil.

  Alice raised her eyebrows. “Felix Spoon is nice to me. Nicer than most kids.”

  “I don’t want him to hurt you. Did he?” Lil veered off on her own train of thought.

  “He didn’t. He just … Mom, believe me, it’s okay. He asked us over to his house today, remember?”

  But Lil didn’t recall, and she couldn’t bear to think of how many moments of Alice’s life had fallen away, without anyone’s attention. Even now, Lil’s mind, like a foggy day, was thick and dull; she couldn’t focus. She thought about sleeping, wanting to lie down on Alice’s bed again. She’d already forgotten the name of the boy, though Alice had just mentioned him a minute ago. Everything tired her out. But molesting? That she did not forget. What if it were true? Maybe staying with Clarisse for a few days wouldn’t be so bad. Just a couple of days, until she could straighten up.

  Lil held Alice’s two hands in hers.

  “Alice, listen to me. Something is going to happen. Mrs. McCarthy is coming over here in a few minutes. You are going to spend some time at her house,” said Lil.

  “What?” cried Alice, her mouth went slack.

  “You know that I’m not well, right? I have to get better so I can take care of you.”

  “No, I don’t want to,” said Alice. “The twins? Mom! No!” Alice raised her fist to her mouth and closed her eyes. “Please don’t make me. I won’t be any trouble, please. You don’t even have to cook.”

  “You aren’t trouble, Alice.”

  “But I like our house, and you, and Dad,” said Alice, fingering the bumps on her bedspread. “I’ve never even been in their house. What if I do something wrong?”

  “You won’t, Alice, believe me. I know it may seem scary now, but maybe it will be a little bit fun, too. I’m sure they have a lot of toys …”

  “But how long do I have to stay?” asked Alice, desperately trying to wipe tears from her eyes.

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know. You have to be strong. You are strong. Oh, Alice, this is not your fault, it’s mine.”

  Alice stopped listening; she stopped feeling or hoping for something different. There was nothing to be done. The sound of her mother’s voice became muffled, her face blurred. Alice’s thoughts turned into slow soft somersaults of resignation.

  JIM O’BRIEN had drifted off on his basement bed and was jarred awake by multiple doorbell rings. “Shit,” he said aloud.

  Clarisse had arrived. He pulled on his pants and shirt, slipped into his loafers, and trudged up the stairs to open the door. “Clarisse, hold your horses.”

  “I was worried when no one answered,” Clarisse said, untying the flowered kerchief that was tied under her chin.

  “Come on in,” said Jim.

  “So, how are things?” she whispered, unbuttoning her coat.

  “Lil is talking to Alice now,” said Jim and then he called down the hallway. “Lil! Clarisse is here!”

  Clarisse looked around the living room. “I told you Mrs. Tanker is coming to clean, right? She’ll straighten this mess.”

  “It’s really not necessary, Clarisse,” said Jim. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Alice came out of her room holding a small red suitcase in one hand and her book bag in the other. She walked down the hall toward the living room.

  “Alice!” said Clarisse, clapping her hands together. “I hear you’re up for a little vacation at my house! The girls are so excited!”

  Alice looked blankly at her father. “Mom said I should wear my coat.” Jim was relieved to see her hold herself together with a poise that seemed beyond her years. He got her coat out of the closet and helped her into it, buttoning each button slowly.

  “So, Alice, this’ll be fun, right?” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Alice.

  Jim put his arms around her and gave her a hug. Alice held onto his neck and whispered urgently into his ear. “Please Dad, don’t make me go.”

  Trying to avoid a scene at all costs, he unhooked her arms from his neck. How could he convey apologies for the mess they found themselves in—the mess that seemed to fall directly upon Alice? He felt his face contort into an absurd grimace, then he turned to Clarisse. “Well, all set then.”

  Lil came down the hall and stood at the entrance to the living room.

  “Lil,” said Clarisse, frowning. “How are you feeling, honey?”

  “Great,” said Lil. “Like a million bucks.”

  “Oh, come on, Lil,” said Jim. “She’s only trying to help.”

  Lil crouched down and opened her arms to Alice, who walked slowly over to her mother and received a kiss. “Remember what I said, okay?” she asked.

  “Yep,” said Alice. “When can I come home?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lil.

  Alice turned to Mrs. McCarthy. She’d never needed to look at her before. How can you switch mothers? Mrs. McCarthy had a face she didn’t want to touch or smell, a face with eyes that Alice didn’t recognize.

  “You have your toothbrush, honey? Clean underpants?” said Clarisse. The mention of underpants embarrassed Alice and she turned back once more to her mother, but Lil had left the room.

  “Come on, now, sweetie,” said Clarisse. “Let’s not make a big fuss.”

  Alice picked up her bag and walked out the door with Clarisse.

  It was dark outside, almost cold as winter. The wind rustled through the treetops, and leaves scraped across the pavement. On Mundy Lane, blurry yellow lights shone from the windows of the living rooms and bedrooms. She could feel that Sneedler was trailing them, and he wouldn’t stop throwing rocks to try to catch her attention. She turned back but couldn’t make him out in the dark. What a pain he could be. Alice hadn’t had a chance to explain things to him, and she had her own problems now. It was serious to be walking down the street in the dark. Her bag was getting heavy, and Mrs. McCarthy didn’t seem as nice as she’d been a minute ago.

  Alice wondered if they’d have any good food in their fridge, and whether it would be okay to ask for some. She wished she could have some spaghetti. It seemed that everyone had forgotten about dinner, and she was so hungry her stomach ached.

  ONCE THE front door to the McCarthys’ house closed behind her, Alice knew that Sneedler would never visit her here. There was an awful smell of fish, and Sneedler hated fish almost as much as Alice did.

  Dawn and Fawn appeared in the hallway zipped up, neck-to-toe, in pink, footed, furry pajamas. Their hair was damp and freshly braided. They turned around and wiggled their behinds at Alice.

  Alice smiled. They were cute. For an instant she felt lucky to be in their house. Other girls would want that.

  “Hi,” she said.

  The twins collapsed into cascading giggles.

  From the living room came the low bark of Mr. McCarthy. “Keep it down! I’m watching a program!” he yelled.

  Alice peeked in to see him nestled in a big black chair
, his bare feet propped up on a footstool. Aside his chair was a small table, and a lit cigarette leaned in an ashtray, its smoke spiraling toward the ceiling in gray curlicues. The TV squawked with laughter from a variety show. Alice had forgotten that he’d be there. He was wide as a small wall, and his sandy-colored hair stood up like a flat square of grass. She didn’t like to think it, but he was fat. It was one thing to have a new mother, but a new, fat father who yelled was even worse. Despite his scolding, the twins carried on, paying him no mind, but Alice worried that he might explode in anger.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” said Clarisse, not at all concerned about her husband’s tone. “Come on, girls.”

  The McCarthys’ kitchen was exactly the same as Alice’s, but the striped wallpaper and red cabinets made it look different. It was orderly and clean, just the way Alice wished that her kitchen at home could be.

  “Do you want a snack, Alice?” asked Clarisse.

  “Thank you, Mrs. McCarthy. I’m pretty hungry,” said Alice.

  “Didn’t you have dinner?” she said.

  “No, I guess we forgot about dinner tonight,” said Alice, trying to be older than she was.

  Clarisse leaned her head out of the kitchen, “Did you hear that, Frank? They forgot to feed her!”

  The girls sat around the kitchen table while Clarisse pulled some dishes out of the refrigerator, and set a place for Alice, pouring her a glass of milk.

  “Who do you like better,” said Dawn. “Me or Fawn?”

  “I like you both,” said Alice.

  “I like you both,” mimicked Dawn, and again the twins laughed wildly. Clarisse set down a chocolate chip cookie in front of each of them.

  “That’s not fair,” said Dawn. “I want two. She can’t have ours; not fair!”

  “Listen, missy, Alice is now like a sister to you both. You’ll share everything with her,” said Clarisse.

  “She’s not my sister,” said Dawn, grabbing hold of Fawn’s arm. “This is my one and only sister.”

  “Nonsense,” said Clarisse. “We’re all brothers and sisters in God’s family, you know that. Now Alice, honey, eat some food first. I have something left over from our supper.”

  When Clarisse set the plate before her and Alice realized that it was real fish, a kind of slab of fish, not like the fish sticks that her mother served her, she didn’t think that she’d be able to eat it. But neither did she want the tomato-y thing, which seemed more like jelly than tomatoes. She managed to swallow a tiny piece of fish, but it was cold and rubbery, and she gave the tomato a try, but the gelatinous square felt as though someone else had already eaten it, and, gagging, she spit it out into her milk glass.

  “Look what she did!” cried Dawn.

  “Alice!” said Clarisse, staring in horror at the blob of tomato aspic floating in the milk.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alice, as she fought back tears and disgust.

  “I told you, Mama,” said Dawn. “She’s always like this!”

  “Can we have her cookies now?” asked Fawn quietly.

  “Go up to your room, girls. Now!” Clarisse pounded the table and the twins promptly hopped off their chairs and thundered up the stairs.

  “You told me you were hungry Alice.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCarthy. I just … don’t like that.”

  “You don’t like it?” Clarisse’s jaw clenched.

  She’d fixed the foldout cot up in the attic room, even bought Alice a small stuffed rabbit for her pillow. She wanted things to be perfect, and had taken this burden on, with grace and conviction, but within a half hour of Alice’s arrival, things had already soured. In the face of a sniffling Alice, she had no pity. Clarisse grabbed the plate off the table. “You don’t know what hunger is,” she said, under her breath.

  But Alice’s stomach growled and twisted. As she climbed the stairs led by Clarisse’s firm hand, Alice thought about spaghetti and meatballs, the kind her mother used to make, before she’d caught the disease of the soul.

  FOURTEEN

  LUKE AND FELIX waited for the butcher at the counter of the meat department in the A&P. When Auggie emerged from the meat freezer and wiped his hands on his bloodstained apron, Felix’s face came alive.

  “Hello fella,” he said, reaching over to shake Felix’s hand. Auggie’s bushy moustache erased his top lip.

  Felix reached up to touch the butcher’s hand. He’d lost the top of his fourth finger in a slicing accident and Felix liked to feel its flat edge.

  “I guess I know what you want,” said Auggie. “Pig’s feet, right?”

  Felix stepped away.

  “All right, all right.” Auggie grabbed the cylinder of bologna from the meat case and hauled it over to the big silver slicer. A few slices of bologna fell onto wax paper and Auggie handed them across the counter to Felix.

  “That ought to keep you for a week,” said Auggie.

  Felix put a piece of bologna in his mouth.

  “Thanks, Auggie,” said Luke, and as they turned their cart toward frozen foods, they almost rammed into Clarisse McCarthy, who was with the twins and Alice O’Brien. Clarisse held a box of Maypo in her hands and was studying the ingredients on the package.

  The twins held on to either side of an overflowing shopping cart, filled to the brim with boxes of cereal, a milk carton, bags of cookies, eggs, and other groceries. Alice stood awkwardly to the side, her hair tied in high pigtails wrapped with pink bows.

  “Oh!” said Clarisse, locking eyes with Luke Spoon. She showed him the box of oatmeal. “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  Gone was the hostility she’d spewed at him in Lil O’Brien’s living room. What he saw standing before him in the A&P were her large, round breasts, barely held together by the buttons of her blouse. Clarisse had retained her girlishness. She reminded Luke of a cunning Marilyn Monroe, one without the tragic eyes. Clarisse’s eyes had a yearning to them, but the yearning suggested appetite, not loss. She’d figured out how to get away with bright red lips—not something every woman could pull off—especially in the supermarket on a Saturday morning.

  A single thought stood up in his brain like one remaining bowling pin after a blowout.

  I need to get laid.

  LUKE’S MOTHER had wanted him to be a priest, but he’d let her down. His younger brother had been the one to take the vows.

  Father Peter—driving drunk after the Christmas Eve meal at the Fin and Claw, with Mom and Dad in the back seat of the car—had slammed head on into a tractor trailer, and—poof—there went Luke’s family. It was a gruesome tragedy, and though his brother held on the longest, by the time Luke landed in the Indianapolis airport, they were all dead. The nurse at the front desk had handed Luke his brother’s priest’s collar and said, “God bless.” Peter had been the golden son. But Luke had to wonder, had Peter resented his choice? Was the accident a ferocious, sublime act of unconscious hostility?

  The death of Luke’s brother and his parents transformed his life instantly. He went from being the estranged son—the starving ne’er-do-well artist—to being a wealthy orphan. Even through the Depression, Luke’s father, Dirk Spoon, had been a successful businessman. Spoon, Inc., sold small hardware—screws and bolts—to the military during the war.

  The last time Luke had seen his parents, on a rare visit to the family home, he’d had words with his father, and ties were broken forever. It happened at Holy Name Church. Luke had not received communion during Sunday mass, and afterward, on the way out of church, his father confronted him about it.

  “Too good for communion? What kind of crap was that?” the old man said.

  “What?” said Luke, pulling back as if he’d expected a hit in the head. “It’s personal.”

  Standing in the parking lot of Holy Name, his father’s voice bellowed as the argument escalated and ended in a threat to exclude Luke from “the will.”

  “You’re a goddamned waste of skin,” the old man yelled.

  Other parishioners mu
lled around in earshot, discreetly folding up their church bulletins. Luke had driven off—pissed—skipping out on his mother’s much-anticipated brunch at the family home, and it broke her heart.

  Eventually she must have interceded on Luke’s behalf because upon their deaths the entire fortune dumped directly into his lap, much to his surprise and embarrassment. He kept the news to himself, and his friends thought Luke Spoon was just like them—a broke artiste.

  In the wake of the tragedy, Luke found himself grieving deeply for his mother. Dear Eleanor. He feared though, that somewhere inside, he, too, resented her. Haunted by her, she’d left him with the strangest affliction: Why couldn’t he have been the priest? She would have loved him most. A strange brand of sibling rivalry.

  Without his mother’s cloud of purity hovering over him, he wondered if he might have lived a less-tortured life. It seemed so easy for others to forgo the Catholic faith, but he felt ensnared in its questions, which were like a tangle of rosaries, impossible to disassemble.

  After the accident, Luke’s paintings changed.

  During that time, he went back and forth from his apartment on Sullivan Street to a small work studio he’d rented near the Hudson River and hardly saw a soul. He digested his grief and survivor guilt in such a way that braided his mother’s Catholicism, his inability to embrace it in the way she had wanted him to, and his own desperate desire to believe in something. Somewhere along the way, Luke Spoon decided he’d paint life instead of living it. During that period of frantic creativity, he kept to himself, and lived what he secretly imagined to be a priest’s life. With a newly fueled devotion to his work, he achieved a modicum of peace.

  His work caught the eye of a prominent gallery owner, Seth Olsen, a man with a preference for horizontal stripes and the color red. He ferried Luke into prominence rather quickly. Luke’s work was taken seriously. His initial show, My Mother—which he’d hoped offered up a fair serving of self-parody (completely missed by most)—was well reviewed, hailed by the New York Times as “fascinating, dark, and almost holy.” This, and every other remark about his work, threw him into a state of crippling embarrassment and a vague sense that he was a fake. The price of success quickly became apparent to him, but his friends thought he was being insufferably arrogant by his refusal to embrace his good fortune. Luke fell back into his old ways, ended his bout with celibacy, and launched into a long string of girlfriends—one crazier than the next—until he came face to face with Joni, and that’s how sex and love convened for Luke, really for the first and only time.