The Town Crazy

by Suzzy Roche

  “Won?” asked Lil. “What did she win, Clarisse?”

  “The prize. This,” said Clarisse, grasping for the literal meaning of things. She set the crucifix down on the coffee table.

  “Who killed Alice, Clarisse? Who gets the prize for that?”

  “I didn’t do it. That’s so unfair!”

  “But I didn’t say you did.”

  Clarisse threw up her hands. “It’s easy to blame me. I give up.”

  “I’m not blaming you. It must have been my fault or mean old Hedda Chinsky’s. She never hurt a fly, but let’s blame her. Maybe the whole town did it. Thanks a lot for the crucifix, Clarisse,” Lil said sadly. “Look what happened to God’s child. Nailed to the cross. How about that for first prize.”

  “Oh Lil,” said Clarisse. “That’s not it at all.”

  “You explain it then.”

  Clarisse wrapped her coat tightly around her and looked down, speechless. For that moment, they shared the weight of Alice’s death. Would there be no end to the blame they would now shoulder—inseparably—forever?

  “I took a big risk coming here,” said Clarisse.

  “Clarisse, what happened that night? I’d like to hear it from you,” said Lil, quietly.

  Clarisse took a breath. “Lil, I don’t know. Honestly. Nothing. We had some ice cream. I tucked them into bed. The girls said they got up after I left the room and played with their prizes and … that Alice traded with Dawn. Maybe she regretted that. I don’t know what happened. Lil, I have to tell you that Alice was troubled … I mean, the poor girl, those scratches …”

  “No, no, no, Clarisse. That’s way too easy. Alice was sensitive. She was very sensitive. What happened in that bedroom?”

  “What? My children are the pride and joy of this town!” said Clarisse, not able to control herself, or bear the thought that her girls were in question. “Frank and I are good people.”

  “Good people!” repeated Lil.

  “You’ve always thought you were better than me, I know,” said Clarisse. “But take some responsibility. You reserve the right to go crazy, as if you’re somehow excused from the rules. Not everyone has that kind of permission.” Clarisse was getting desperate. “Why do you even live in Hanzloo? You could have run off to New York City with Luke Spoon and his wife.”

  “Luke Spoon? This is ridiculous,” said Lil. “I think you should go, now.”

  “I can’t!” Clarisse tightened her arms around her coat and bent over, succumbing to tears. The loud, lurching sound of her cries was shocking. Lil didn’t know what to do.

  “Clarisse, get a hold of yourself.”

  “Don’t kick me out. Please. I thought we were friends.”

  Lil had never seen Clarisse in tears before.

  “Clarisse, we can’t make this right, don’t you see that? What do you want from me?”

  Finally, Clarisse calmed down enough to speak. “Lil, I’m in a terrible mess.”

  Lil’s eyes narrowed.

  “Can I sit down for a moment?”

  Lil was still shaking, barely holding back a torrent of rage, but she moved aside, and allowed Clarisse to sit on the couch.

  “I’m pregnant,” said Clarisse quietly. “From Luke Spoon.”

  “You can’t be serious. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I use … birth control with Frank.”

  “Oh jeez,” said Lil, not wanting to picture any of this.

  “Obviously I have to do something, and I know that you know what to do.”

  Lil froze.

  “Look, don’t fly off the handle, but I know you were pregnant. Steph overheard a conversation between you and Doctor Garufee as you were coming out of his office, and she was in the waiting room. I figured it out, when I saw you … well … fall apart.”

  So, they both knew. She wondered now if the whole town knew but was not about to ask. Instead she said, “Really, Clarisse! Luke Spoon?”

  “Please. It’s painful enough,” said Clarisse, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. “I made a fool of myself. Will you help me, or not?”

  “I can’t help.”

  “Please. I need the number of the doctor who did—who can do—an abortion,” said Clarisse, barely able to say the word.

  For the briefest moment, Lil felt bad for her, but she resisted the urge.

  “Oh, it’s a sin, Clarisse, isn’t it? Any priest will tell you that,” said Lil, sure that Clarisse and Steph had condemned her to hell for it already, probably over cookies and tea.

  “I have to do it,” Clarisse said. “You know I do. I can’t go to Garufee. He plays golf with Frank. Life is impossible, it’s just impossible.” She fumbled with a cigarette until it snapped in half and she threw it on the table.

  Lil might have thought she’d be glad to see Clarisse this way, but she wasn’t, and whatever ridiculous series of mishaps had led her to Luke Spoon’s bed seemed irrelevant now. She hated that they were hopelessly tied together in the mess of their lives.

  Lil tried to calm down. “There’s a woman in Philadelphia,” she said.

  “A woman?” said Clarisse, afraid. “Is it safe?”

  “It’s illegal. But it was clean, and she seemed to know what she was doing. But, I …”

  “What? Wish you hadn’t?”

  “No. I don’t regret it,” said Lil, emphatically, but then she looked away. There was no reason to rail against her because Clarisse was no longer Clarisse; she was somebody else now—just like Lil wasn’t Lil. She bore little resemblance to the previous version of herself; someone that she’d never really been anyway.

  Clarisse, rattled, stood looking at the rug, whimpering.

  Lil went over to the piano bench and lifted its seat. She was not about to comfort Clarisse. Frantically rifling through the old music books, she found a thin wallet. In the wallet was a scrap of paper with the name and address of the doctor, Agnes Morris, in Philadelphia. She handed it to Clarisse.

  “I took the bus from Silverton,” said Lil.

  “The bus?” said Clarisse, realizing how daunting that trip would be. Absurdly, she thought for a moment about asking Lil to go with her, but knew it was out of the question. “Thank you,” Clarisse said under her breath. She turned to go.

  Lil picked up the crucifix from the table. “Take it, Clarisse. Get rid of it.”

  A hollow expression crept over Clarisse’s eyes as she took the cross, yet Lil remained unmoved.

  Before she went out the door, Clarisse looked back. “Lil, why can’t we be friends? We could set a good example.”

  Lil let out a desperate laugh. She shook her head, addressing Clarisse as calmly as she could. “Our acquaintance is an accident, if you’ll excuse the expression. We live on the same street, that’s all. That street is now the street where Alice was run over by a car! I can look out my front door every morning, afternoon, and night and see the exact spot where she drew her last breath. If there’s any significant connection between us, Clarisse, it’s that you and I both know that the scratches on Alice’s face were not self-inflicted. Now please go away, and don’t come back.”

  They locked eyes, momentarily paralyzed. Clarisse was frightened. She inhaled, as if she had something to say, but hurried out the door, firmly shutting it behind her.

  TWENTY-NINE

  BY APRIL, PEOPLE were tired of the cold and the wind. A punishing ice storm froze the first crocuses and left trees burdened with heavy, glistening branches.

  But May brought a welcome change in the weather and in other things, too. A young couple expecting their second child bought the Chinsky home. On a mild and sunny Saturday, neighborhood children sat in a line on the Contes’ lawn, hugging their knees to their chins, and watched as the huge moving van pulled up to the curb.

  To many in town it was a big relief. Having that house sit dark and empty for those winter months only served as a reminder of the accident. Some hoped the O’Briens would move, too. Wouldn’t they be happier somewhere
else, far away from the tragedy, where they could start over?

  On a life-affirming note, Clarisse McCarthy had ballooned up rather nicely, expecting her third child, surprising everyone in town.

  “At least it’s not twins,” she’d said to Steph, rubbing her belly when she broke the news.

  “Another baby. Well, you and Frank make beautiful kids,” said Steph, but she wondered: had they never heard of birth control? No one is that devout.

  Clarisse had spent the past few months ruminating on her last visit to Lil’s house. For Lil to suggest that her girls had anything to do with Alice’s death was downright mean. The twins could be feisty, but it didn’t make them murderers. No one in their right mind would accuse her six-year-olds—really—after all Clarisse had done for poor Alice. Lil was crazy.

  The twins were victims, too. One day, while changing the children’s bedsheets, under Fawn’s pillow, Clarisse had discovered a drawing; a frowning face with black and red crayon marks drawn harshly across it. Clarisse had taken Fawn aside for a private talk.

  “Why draw something like that?” she asked, cutting the picture up with a scissors. “It puts bad ideas in your head.”

  Fawn stood there sucking her thumb, twisting a strand of hair with her finger. When pressed, she blurted out, “I’m scared. Of Dawn.” Tears followed.

  “Oh, honey. Take that thumb out of your mouth and listen to me. Dawn is just going through a phase.” Fawn stared at her blankly. “A phase is something … that you go through. Oh, com’ere.” Clarisse drew Fawn into her embrace and kissed her forehead. “In the meantime, drawing pictures like that can only lead to nightmares.”

  Clarisse would not allow herself to get pulled into gloominess. She wished she’d never made the visit to Lil’s, and one day, she threw Alice’s crucifix in the trunk of her car, drove to Farrow’s Corner, parked behind the old abandoned movie house, climbed up onto the filthy, rusty dumpster, and tossed the prize into the jumble of garbage, snagging her nylons in the process. The crucifix landed underneath the legs of a discarded rocking chair, and Clarisse lifted a damp, mildewed rug from the rubbish and threw it across the chair.

  Back in the car, she wiped the dirt from her hands and skirt with a Kleenex, then checked her face in the rearview mirror, feeling like a common criminal. But at least the crucifix was gone.

  Still, the troubling behavior with the twins continued, and between Fawn’s fearfulness and Dawn’s tantrums, Clarisse had her hands full. One night, Dawn threw a sharp knife across the length of the kitchen. It flew through the air like a hatchet.

  She’d grown weary of her children.

  Of late, Dawn was refusing to wear the same outfits as Fawn, and where they used to be inseparable, now they were at each other’s throats. One night at the dinner table, Clarisse shrieked, “You’re getting harder to love!” The twins froze when she said it, and Clarisse ran upstairs, leaving Frank to handle the aftermath.

  Sometimes, in the middle of folding the bath towels, or picking up Frank’s work shirts from the cleaners, she’d be overcome by an intense longing for Luke Spoon, so powerful that she could almost smell him. Like an allergy attack, her desire would flare. And though she could not have him, she could have his child.

  Once she had made her decision, she found that big-time lying was a piece of cake. Even to Frank. “I guess the rubber broke,” he’d winked, hugging her tightly and grabbing her bottom. In fact, he was so thrilled to hear that she was pregnant, he had a dozen red roses delivered to the house the next day.

  There was such a thing as a truth that worked for everyone. In a way, it was a sinless lie. One had to choose one’s sins, and abortion was too frightening for Clarisse. Maybe it was that long solitary bus ride to Philadelphia that swayed her.

  But still, there was the lie, and the deception weighed heavily. Clarisse retrieved her Bible from the basement and took to sitting with it once a day when the house was calm and quiet and the sunlight made patterns on the living room rug. She struggled to read one page at a time. It was boring. But touching the translucent gold-edged pages of the sacred book made her feel worthy.

  That kind of effort had to count for something. She was sorry. For everything. She prayed herself raw until she sensed forgiveness for her affair, for lying about the baby, and she prayed for it to be true that Alice O’Brien had scratched her own face. No matter what Lil O’Brien said, the McCarthys were good people, and they would welcome the baby, their baby. Clarisse would have someone to love.

  MONTHS LATER, when Clarisse ran into Lil at the pharmacy, Clarisse had ironed things out in her mind. All fixed up again—hair thoroughly blonde, nails manicured and painted pink for spring—Clarisse came barreling around the corner from the prescription desk and practically collided with Lil, whose eyes immediately fell on Clarisse’s polka-dot maternity blouse. Clarisse looked around to see who might be nearby, as if she’d just stolen a tube of toothpaste.

  “Lil,” said Clarisse, in that way that everyone addressed Lil now, with a slightly downward tone, as though her very name was an expression of sympathy. Lil was pale from a winter of mourning, but her flawless skin was smooth as a pearl, and her reddish hair had grown full and long, curling past her shoulders.

  “You look so nice, Lil,” said Clarisse.

  Lil said nothing.

  “Beautiful day. Finally, right?” said Clarisse, witlessly glancing at a watch that wasn’t even on her wrist.

  “Don’t talk to me,” said Lil, and she hurried by to the exit.

  LIL LOOKED forward to a time when she’d run into Clarisse and not be able to remember her name.

  Some days were okay, even better than that, but sometimes she slipped into a darkness that scared her. She held on to household chores, because without the constant motion, blankets of grief could smother her.

  She’d found a gentle soul in Sister A. Their weekly visits had continued, and Lil looked forward to them. They’d finished Charlotte’s Web and were now a third of the way through Stuart Little. Once in a while, over the two jelly donuts that she always brought, Sister A. would share news of Felix. He was enrolled in a school in New York City that focused on the arts, which was mildly intriguing to Lil. And apparently Luke Spoon, upon leaving Hanzloo, had immersed himself in his paintings. As for Joni, she had softened toward her mother, perhaps because she was grateful to Sister A. for being kind to Felix, or perhaps because she was growing older. She was pursuing, well, Sister A. didn’t really know. Something about a new kind of folk music. “Do you think she can sing?” said Sister A., always managing to make Lil laugh a little. Sister A. stayed clear of difficult subjects, but felt it was good for Lil to hear news from New York City.

  SECRETLY, LIL started working on a poem. She couldn’t be sure that she would finish it, but daily, after Jim drove off to work, she sat at her kitchen table with a yellow lined pad and a Montblanc ballpoint pen she’d found on the library floor. The sleek green pen felt smooth in the palm of her hand, and she’d slipped it into her purse instead of turning it in.

  After two months, she’d filled up half the pad with her scribbles. Lines were written and crossed out or rearranged in different stanzas. While she sat there writing, time stood still, but no poem seemed forthcoming.

  Inevitably, she’d scoff at what she wrote, close up her pad, and hide it under the cloth napkins and the coupons that she carefully cut out but couldn’t remember to bring to the store.

  ON A rainy Tuesday night Jim came home and, instead of pouring a drink, he stood in the kitchen with his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ve been going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you know what that is?”

  Lil was at the stove lighting a match to the burner. He stared at the floor waiting for her to turn around and say something, but she didn’t.

  “Do you think less of me?” he asked, his heart hammering.

  There was a long pause. “No. Of course not. I love you,” she said flatly, still fiddling at the stove.

  Jim pull
ed a quart of milk out of the refrigerator, poured himself a glass, and sat down at the table, noticing that one of the bulbs had burned out in the overhead light. Maybe that was why the room looked so dim.

  “Do you love me?” he asked, hunching over the table. He waited for her answer. Lil wore a faded brown shirtwaist dress, and her figure was so slight and delicate that just the sight of her made him worry. It occurred to him that he’d always been worried about Lil, ever since he’d met her. “Can’t you look at me?”

  Lil turned to face him and smiled blankly. “I’m here. I think it’s good to stop drinking, it’s wonderful, really, but I love you no matter what.” She sat down, too.

  What was she saying? She seemed a million miles away. “I’m a bozo,” he said.

  She laughed, or it was more like she pushed air through her nose. “You’re funny. A bozo? That’s why I love you, you make me laugh.”

  “You haven’t laughed in forever.”

  “Laughed in forever, you see, that’s funny too. I laugh inside,” she said.

  He watched the sorrow pass over her eyes, and he grabbed her wrists, urgently, as if he could somehow push it back. “Oh Lil, come on. I know that you think you’ve lost everything. But you haven’t. People get through things. The stories I’ve heard at these meetings I go to, you wouldn’t believe.” Jim felt himself getting animated, in that way he used to do, before her illness, before the accident. “You and I have each other and there’s no reason to think we couldn’t—I don’t know—move away from here. Have another child!”

  Lil pulled her hands away from his and wiped them on her dress.

  “I’ll try, I really will,” she said. “She’s gone—that’s that—right? We have to get on with it.” She smacked her fist down on the table, causing Jim’s glass of milk to tremble, and Jim pulled away, alarmed. “Why couldn’t I be the one to die?”