The Town Crazy

by Suzzy Roche

  A pot of water was heating on the stove. She got up and took a package of peas out of the freezer.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  Jim was tired, and he wished he could have a whiskey; he could almost taste it in the back of his mouth. Instead he got up and took some plates out of the cupboard and set them on the table. He watched his wife, in her old brown dress, as she poured the peas into the pot, as she placed a hand on either side of the stove and leaned there, waiting for the water to boil. Everything about her seemed entirely ordinary, yet he knew that she was far out of this world.

  THIRTY

  “THE DOOR WAS open,” yelled Sister A. “And nuts, I forgot the jellies,” she added, hobbling across the room in her habit, fidgeting with her eye patch. Her rosaries swung into a small pile beside her as she thumped down on the couch.

  Lil came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. “You’re early,” she said. “I’m just heating up the coffee.”

  “Never mind the coffee, Lil, come sit, and see what I’ve got here. Open this. Luke Spoon is having a show in New York City,” said Sister A. She held the envelope out to Lil with an excited, shaky hand.

  Lil took the glossy card out of the envelope. Luke Spoon’s name jumped out at her; the letters appeared to be cut from magazines or newspapers, and the title Descent to Hell in bold type was under his name.

  “Oh, is that the name of his show?” she asked, running her finger across the words.

  “Who knows?” said Sister A.

  Under the title was an abstract painting, and at first glance it looked like a jumble of colors and nothing more. The earthy grays and browns, purples and blues were cool and edgy. But then she saw that, no, the painting was of something. When she recognized the devil horns, the image snapped into clarity like an optical illusion that suddenly reveals itself.

  Lil let the envelope drop to the floor and held the card closer to her face with both hands. No, no, no. It couldn’t be, but it was: Alice, dressed as the old maid. Strands of orange painted into her gray wig, and she was holding hands with the devil, Felix. It was Halloween all over again. Alice and Felix. How could he?

  Lil’s eyes raced back and forth from the image of Felix to the image Alice, as if by staring at them they might disappear. There must be some mistake. How could that man have used Alice like this? And what about Felix, what must he feel? Descent to Hell? She flipped the card over, as if there’d be an explanation or something redeeming there. On the back of the card was a handwritten note.

  Dear Mother,

  Luke is having a new show in the city. Isn’t the portrait of the children pure genius? Please come and stay over. September 10, at Boonswell Gallery on Sullivan Street. Luke insists on providing transport and putting you up in a hotel.

  Bring Lil O’Brien.

  Felix says hi. The other day his teacher compared him to Picasso. He’ll be excited to see you both in July when we have a chance to come and take the last of Luke’s junk out of Hanzloo.

  ~Joni Spoon

  The last of Luke’s junk? Lil read those words again and cringed, wondering if Clarisse’s baby would fall into that category.

  As she knelt to the floor to pick up the envelope, more of Joni’s words came back at her. Isn’t the portrait of the children pure genius? Genius? As if the children had simply sprung from a whim of The Great Spoon and weren’t real children at all. As if they were his to paint and play around with, to make a name for himself in the art world.

  She raised her eyes to Sister A., who was leaning forward with her hands on her lap, anticipating Lil’s reaction to the news. She saw nothing in the nun’s expression that showed that she understood. Was it possible that Sister A., with her one eye, could not really see the painting? Or did she think it was perfectly fine?

  “So?” asked Sister A.

  “A show. How wonderful. September,” said Lil, quickly putting the card back in the sleeve. Lil was talking too fast, grasping for something to say. “Such great news.”

  “What’s wrong?” said Sister A.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. I couldn’t go. But thank you,” said Lil, and she handed the envelope back to Sister A.

  “No, tell me. Something’s wrong. You must go. You’re the one with the eyes.”

  “Jim wouldn’t like it, and honestly, I—”

  “I’ll speak to your husband,” said Sister A.

  “No, please, don’t. It’s not a good idea,” said Lil, a little too loudly. She looked around the room for something to do. Seeing that the curtains on the picture window were not equally drawn, she went to even them out.

  “Lil, why? Why not get out of this town for a few days? New York City!” said Sister A. “What’s the harm in it?”

  Lil paused, struck by Sister A.’s urgency. She took her usual seat across from the sister and stared at her hands in her lap.

  “Sister, I grew fond of Felix, just like you did. And Luke Spoon, well I guess he’s a real artist, or something—but I don’t belong in New York City, and I don’t want to go.”

  Lil glanced up at Sister A., the words now falling from her mouth. Lil smiled, racing through her thoughts. “I wrote some poems when I was young. I won a talent show. I can’t remember now. You know, once I dragged Jim to an art fair. His reaction made me laugh. He said, ‘People really spend all day long painting pictures?’ How did he come up with that? Jim says funny things—the way his mind works.” Lil shook her head. “The truth is, I know nothing about art, and I’m no New Yorker.” Lil stopped talking.

  “How do you know what you are?” said Sister A.

  “Oh, what difference does it make?” said Lil.

  She looked at her friend. Sister A. had helped her through the last few months with regular visits; all the reading they had done, and the talking about nothing. Now, as the nun peered at Lil with her solitary eye, holding Luke Spoon’s invitation in her hand as if it were a ticket to the moon, Lil was filled with a cavernous ache. She felt herself disappearing and wished that the nun would just go away.

  “Don’t be silly. We’ll take the bus to Philadelphia and the train to Grand Central Station. Come on.” Sister A. slapped her hands on her lap. “Oh, Lil, I’ve often thought of you when I go in and out of this town. Have you ever noticed those signs, the ones that say:

  You are now entering Hanzloo

  Where dreams come true

  On the other side of the side of the sign it ought to say:

  You are now leaving Hanzloo

  Where dreams come true

  “Maybe you don’t belong in Hanzloo,” said Sister A.

  Lil lowered her head, remembering how she and Alice used to plan their trip to New York City. All those years they could have gone. Lil never had the nerve. And what about Alice’s dreams? They never really went farther than the five-and-dime in Farrow’s Corner or the annual trip for Buster Brown shoes in Silverton.

  “I don’t want to go,” said Lil.

  “Give yourself a chance,” said Sister A., so agitated that her breath was short. “There’s a world out there.”

  “No. My world is here.” Lil opened her arms to her living room and glanced around.

  Sister A. stood up, as if to go.

  “How do you think I would feel looking at that painting of Alice and Felix in a gallery in New York City?” The words flew in anger out of Lil’s mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sister, take out the invitation, and look at it closely,” Lil said.

  Sister A. opened up the envelope and held the card up to her face. Lil watched the old nun’s eye dart back and forth, straining to see with her one good eye. Slowly she realized the painting was not a simple mash of colors, and she fumbled with the invitation, shoving it back in its case. Her face tightened with regret. Lil wished she hadn’t said anything.

  Sister A. stood helplessly before her.

  “Sister, I …”

  “No need to explain. I was careless, caught up with myse
lf. Lil, I didn’t see it at first. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. How cruel it must seem.”

  “I’m sure that no one meant to be cruel,” said Lil.

  Sister A. raised her hand. “Please, you don’t have to say a word,” she said, crossing over to stand in front of Lil. With some difficulty, she got down on one knee, and took hold of Lil’s hand. It frightened Lil to see Sister A. on her knees.

  “Listen to me. No one can know another’s sorrow, but even from the distance between us, I’ve seen yours, and I guess you’ve seen mine. I got attached to that boy, and in my desperation to belong, to be forgiven, or something like that, I’ve managed to let you down. I hurt you, the last thing I wanted. I’m sorry will never do.”

  There was nothing else to say. Lil turned her head away, and Sister A. gathered her skirts and rosaries and struggled to stand up, quickly making her way out the door.

  PEEKING THROUGH the curtains, Lil watched her friend turn out of the driveway and walk down Mundy Lane. The nun mumbled to herself as she walked down the empty street, and Lil thought about how strange it would be to live under those dark heavy robes. Sister A. might never come back.

  Lil stood for a long time, resting her forehead on the windowpane. There was Hedda Chinsky, confused, standing in front of her car with her arms outstretched. And there were the whirring red lights of the ambulance turning in the darkness and the ring of neighbors looking on in horror, hugging their coats over their nightclothes. Every time she looked out the front window, Lil saw Alice die.

  From now on, it might just be Jim; the two of them sweeping toast crumbs into their palms, washing dishes with a dirty sponge, and changing light bulbs. How long could they rattle around this empty house?

  After a while Lil went into the kitchen. From the drawer beside the refrigerator, underneath the napkins and the coupons, she fished out her yellow lined pad and her smooth, green ballpoint pen, and sat down at the table. Outside, in the backyard beyond the fence, the sky was blue, wide, and empty. Fresh air came through the screen. Was it really spring?

  Absentmindedly, Lil examined her hands. She allowed her thumb and forefinger to turn her wedding ring around.

  A cereal box behind the cookie jar caught her eye, and she picked up her pen. Cheerios, she wrote. The clock ticked on the wall. Out the window, she saw two birds. They flew as one entity, squawking at each other, tumbling in the air.

  The afternoon lingered, but time flew, and when she put the pen down and looked up at the clock, it was almost four thirty. Hours had passed, and not another word had reached her page. Cheerios.

  She hadn’t planned dinner. Was it pork chops or lamb chops that Jim said he wanted? She’d have to rush.

  The kitchen shivered with silence; dishes rested in the drainer, her coffee pot cooled on the stove, and a stainless-steel spoon lay on the table. Lil reached out to it, as if it was a hand.

  The sudden ring of the phone—out of nowhere it seemed—caused her to jump, and she rushed to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Lil, it’s me.”

  “You scared me. Is everything okay?”

  She could hear Jim’s chuckle through the phone.

  “I scared you? Everything’s fine,” he said. “It’s nothing, really. I just thought—”

  “What is it? Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m here, I’m here at the office. Nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking that … you know,” he said, and his voice broke the way it always did whenever the slightest emotion escaped, as if a tidal wave might follow and wash the world away. “I was thinking. Let’s get out of here. Let’s move. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” he said. “We could even go to New York City.”

  Lil was silent. “Hello?” said Jim.

  “Jim. Not New York City. Let’s go the other way. Some place where the sky is bigger than the town,” said Lil.

  “Huh? Okay, sure. Lil, I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you want.”

  Lil twirled her finger in the cord of the phone.

  “Lil, did you hear what I just said?”

  “Yes. You said, ‘whatever I want.’” Closing her eyes, she touched her lips to the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “Yeah! We’ll talk about it tonight. Big change coming. So, what’s for dinner?” said Jim, his voice breaking with hope.

  “Who knows, I might cook some potatoes,” Lil said absentmindedly.

  “Hey!”

  “Mmm?”

  “You know, what you just said—who knows, I might cook some potatoes—it’s a poem. Get it? It rhymes.”

  “Oh. I guess so. That’s pretty good, Jimmy,” she said, realizing that she hadn’t called him Jimmy for a long time.

  “I don’t know what you see in me,” said Jim.

  Lil thought it was an odd thing to say. At that moment, she saw everything in him, all there was and what might ever be. Within him was her universe of dead feelings, of sorrow and of loss. He was the one who cared if she lived or died. She hung up the phone, went back to the kitchen table and laid her forehead down on her folded arms. “Oh, God, where have I been?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  THE SUMMER OF 1962 was cooler than the summer of ’61, but the women of Hanzloo still managed to complain about something as they drank whiskey sours in Clarisse McCarthy’s driveway and watched their children run across the lawn and through the sprinkler. The lazy late-afternoon klatch had expanded to include some new neighbors.

  Miranda Sellers, who had moved into Lil O’Brien’s place in the middle of June, was a force to be reckoned with. Feisty, and a few years younger than the others. Clarisse thought she was a lot of fun. The Sellerses had resettled from Georgia, and they both had that charming Southern twang. Miranda was Clarisse’s new best pal, and lately they could be seen shopping together in town, rolling their baby boys in brand new strollers, the twins trailing behind.

  “Three kids, and there goes your waistline,” Ginny Rice had made the mistake of saying to Clarisse shortly after Frank Jr.’s birth. That was the final straw for Ginny; she was no longer welcome at the driveway gatherings, especially since she’d recently been getting sloshed at parties.

  “No drunks allowed,” Clarisse had told Miranda over drinks, to which Miranda had replied, “Ha ha, except for y’all and me.” Clarisse had laughed heartily. Miranda was a riot, comic relief after a weird year. Weird was the new word.

  On September 3, the women convened for the last time before the start of school. In the sky, angry clouds threatened; there’d been weather reports of a late summer thunderstorm. But the women agreed to meet anyway, because today was a memorial of sorts.

  Marilyn Monroe had died in early August. What a shocker. All summer, for the sake of their new neighbors, the women had spent hours rehashing—from every angle—the saga of the famous artist Luke Spoon and the heartbreaking details of Alice O’Brien’s death. But today they were ravenous for photos, articles, or any insights into the life and death of Marilyn Monroe. Each woman came with a stack of magazines to share.

  “To think that people always said I resemble her,” said Clarisse as Steph passed around a magazine that had a photo of Marilyn in beaded white, her arms outstretched, standing in the murky shadows of the stage singing “Happy Birthday” to the president. “I never thought she looked like me.”

  The women, engrossed in their magazines, didn’t comment, except for Miranda, who said, “But, honey-pie, you drive all the fellas wild.”

  “Did you hear that?” said Clarisse, in baby talk to Frankie as she jiggled him on her lap. Frank Jr., who’d arrived with all his fingers and toes on May 30, was a jewel, and Clarisse adored his every bubble and fart. He’d emerged with a full head of black hair, which was a detail Clarisse hadn’t planned for. Luckily, Frank had never said a word about the color of the baby’s hair. As only Clarisse would know, Frank Jr.’s tiny lips were identical to Luke Spoon’s, and every day she kissed them at least hundred times.

  “Look at this one,” said Vicki
Walsh, turning her magazine upside down to show the others a shot of Marilyn at the age of five, smiling in a wooden chair, with one leg dangling, her foot in an anklet sock and patent leather shoe. “Isn’t this the cutest, saddest thing? If someone had told her then that she would take her own life. What a tragedy.”

  “That is sad,” said Gwen Tormey, who had moved into the Chinskys’ house. “But that’s showbiz.”

  “Hmmm,” said Clarisse.

  “Mamma mia!” said Stephanie, pointing to a page in her magazine. “Clarisse! Look at this!”

  “What is it?”

  Vicki rushed over to Stephanie to take a look. “Lil O’Brien!” She quickly downed the last sip of whiskey in her plastic cup.

  “What do you mean Lil O’Brien?” asked Clarisse.

  “It’s her, she’s in this magazine!” Steph flipped to the front cover. “In Redbook!”

  “What? Why?”

  “She’s one of three. Look, it says right here, Lil O’Brien from—what the heck?—Ennis, Montana? So that’s where they ran off to?” said Vicki.

  “Ennis? Let me see,” said Clarisse, as she leaned over Steph’s lawn chair.

  “It’s poetry. Her poem is printed in the magazine. And there’s a photo, too,” said Steph.

  All the women were clustered around Stephanie now. “Miranda, look. That’s Lil, who lived in your house, the one we’ve been talking about all summer. Alice’s mother,” said Vicki.

  “Here, Clarisse, here it is.” Stephanie laid her index finger down under the title of Lil’s poem. “It’s called ‘Rivulets.’ What does that mean?”

  No one volunteered a definition.

  The women read on in silence, until Vicki looked up and said, “The stove I boil my heart upon? The stitches on my soul? I don’t know, that’s disturbing. Is that poetry?”

  “Well, Lil was different,” said Stephanie. “In a good way, I always thought.”

  “Rubbing babies from my eye,” chuckled Miranda. “I’ll tell y’all one thing, my baby’s way too fat for that! What the heck is she talking about? I mean, jeez.”

  “Shhh,” said Clarisse. “I’m reading it.”