Homebodies

by Joan Schweighardt

  Ellen informed them that Sherri had already been evaluated, but the police said that things had changed since then. There were medications available now that might keep the girl calmer.

  The doctors at the institution thought it best that Fred and Ellen leave Sherri with them for awhile. At first, the Crums were glad to have such an extravagant reprieve and still to know that Sherri was in safe hands. But Sherri phoned them several times during the first few days, screaming so loudly about her disdain for the place that they could hardly understand her. Besieged with guilt and confusion, Ellen tried to get Lizzie on the phone, but Lizzie was hitchhiking across the country with a few friends and Ellen could not reach her. After two weeks the doctors phoned to say that Sherri was ready to go home.

  Fred and Ellen held hands in the waiting room, something they had never done in public before, and prepared themselves to confront their daughter’s wrath. But when Sherri emerged, she did not seem angry at all. She seemed, in fact, so calm, her smile so good-natured, that Ellen had no qualms about leaving her alone in the waiting room so that she could go in with Fred and hear what the doctors had to say.

  In the office, the doctors explained that Sherri had been medicated and gave the Crums her prescription. They said that the pills would help her to control emotions that would otherwise, eventually, lead her into a good deal of trouble. Ellen explained that Sherri couldn’t help her emotions; she was retarded. One of the doctors smiled and exchanged a glance with his associates. “She’s not retarded,” he said. “Whoever told you that? Your daughter is schizophrenic.”

  Retarded, schizophrenic, whatever. It meant nothing to Fred except that he would have to get the dictionary down from the shelf in the closet again. His daughter was sick, and no matter what word you used to describe her sickness, she would still be sick in the end. At least now she had the pills to counteract the sickness. But Ellen, who understood the word no better than did Fred, was outraged. Finding out that after all these years they had been thinking about their daughter erroneously was like finding out that you had taken the wrong infant home from the hospital. If that was the case, if their daughter was not retarded after all, then why was it that none of Sherri’s teachers had bothered to inform her? It occurred to her that maybe Sherri was both—retarded and schizophrenic—that maybe Sherri was a bastion for affliction, a twister that would suck up other disorders as she reeled her way through life.

  Ellen, who had the final word in these matters, felt too old and too weak to attempt to control Sherri any longer. She had the pills, she could do as she liked. And thus, though Sherri was often tired, she continued to go out, and to return home enveloped in a cloud of evil fragrances. Ellen’s only consolation was that about that time, just when she had begun to think of death as a warm, safe place—like a womb—where one’s weaknesses and responsibilities were of no concern to anyone, Lizzie reentered her life.

  She had met a man whom she wanted to marry, and Fred and Ellen concluded that this man was responsible for the change in her. Now she wanted to visit often, and she stayed longer. Sometimes she accepted a sandwich, a cup of tea. Often she asked them how they were and looked as if she really wanted to know. Someone had finally clipped her wings. Finally, she was earth-bound.

  Fred feels something brush against him and looks up to see his daughter’s bloated, blemished face descending upon him. Sometimes when she comes he doesn’t recognize her, but as he has been thinking about her, today he does. No one else rolls her bottom lip up over the top one the way she does; that’s the giveaway. It makes her look like she has only one lip. She rolls it down again and bends to kiss him. Her kiss is wet. Then she backs away to allow the one behind her access. This one too he knows. It is Jake, his grandson. Jake kisses the air aside Fred’s cheek and whispers, “We’re taking you to see polar bears!” Then the two roll him away from the others before he can make sense of Jake’s exclamation.

  When they reach the windows, Sherri stands looking out anxiously while Jake expounds. “Polar bears, Poppie,” he squeals. “Remember you were talking about them yesterday? You’re going to have so much fun.”

  Fred has no idea what the boy is babbling about, but as he can see that Jake is excited, he smiles. Then all at once he feels washed over by his love for the boy and he begins to cry, covering his face to hide the tears. He hates the way his emotions overtake him these days.

  In the dark of his eyelids he forgets what set him off. He drops his hand and expects to see his lunch set out before him, or one of the nurses, or some of the other old folks in their wheelchairs. But it is only Sherri and Jake. Jake is saying, “That’s how me and Aunt Sherri figured out how important it was to you! That’s how we got the idea! I called your doctor this morning and pretended I was Mom. It was great! I knew it would work because at home, whenever I answer the phone, people always think I’m her. ’Cause our voices are almost alike. I said, ‘I’d like to take my father Mr. Crum out in his wheelchair today, just roll him around in the sun for a bit.’ And then the doctor said in a teacher voice, ‘I don’t advise it, Mrs. Arroway.’ Then I had to think quick. I said, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, what harm can it do?’ You should have heard me. I sounded just like her. Aunt Sherri was laughing in the background. I had to say ‘hold on’ to get her to simmer down. Then I said to the doctor, ‘Oh, I’m just going to roll him around in the parking lot. The poor man is always asking us to take him outside so he can see the sun and the sky.’ So finally he says okay, as long as we don’t leave the parking lot or nothing. It was great! By the time they figure out that we’ve left the parking lot, we’ll be all the way to the zoo.”

  Sherri cries, “He’s here! I see him! He’s parking!”

  Jake says, “Poppie, you want to take your G.I. Joe with you?”

  Fred doesn’t understand the question, but he understands that it is one and nods.

  “Where is it?” Jake asks.

  Fred shrugs. Jake says, “Aunt Sherri, go look in his drawer in his room. Quick. We got to make our getaway before someone catches on.”

  Sherri runs off immediately, sliding her feet and tilting forward at an angle that makes her look like an awkward skater. When she returns, she has Fred’s sweater as well as the G. I. Joe. Fred starts to cry again at the sight of the sweater. At last, someone has figured out what he wants. He doesn’t know whether to use his good hand to reach for the sweater or to cover his quaking face. Before he can decide, Sherri drapes the sweater over his shoulders. Jake says, “Look, Aunt Sherri. He’s so happy he’s crying. I feel so proud for thinking of this.”

  When Fred looks up at the boy he sees that his eyes are moist too. He stares at him, trying to determine what he’s done to upset him. He remembers that he upset Lizzie once. He can see her in his mind’s eye in a state of incredible agitation, wringing her hands and looking at the carpet as if there were mice running amuck on it. But then he recalls that he had been merely the observer of that agitation, not the source.

  He strains his mind to remember. Gradually, it comes—the lost child. But here is her child right in front of him, smiling so hard that his retainer is reflecting the sunlight that pours in through the window. Maybe Lizzie didn’t lose a child after all. Maybe it is someone else who he is thinking of. He’s glad; he knows what it is like to lose a child; he lost two of them. But then it seems again that Lizzie did lose a child, not this one but another.

  For an instant, Lizzie’s reaction to her loss illuminates his mind. She did lose a child. She isolated herself in a world that was separate from the world around her and fashioned her own cocoon. He resented her for it, because, while he had fashioned one once himself, his was a protective measure. Hers, on the other hand, was self-destructive. He was never able to understand why she didn’t just go on. Now, after all this time, he has a sudden, vivid flash of comprehension. Lizzie didn’t fashion her cocoon as he did his. It formed around her without her knowing it. She felt no different then than he does now. She was aware of the comings and go
ings of other people, but could make no sense of them. The only difference is that he wants, sorely, to make sense out of senselessness. He yearns for it. She yearned for nothing, was content to watch the mice frolic.

  But then something had pulled her out—or partway out. He tries to remember what it was. In his mind’s eye he sees his face again as he saw it in the mirror earlier, a newborn baby face with loose skin and small eyes and toothless—until the nurse helped him to his false ones.

  They are moving down the hall, flying past the nurses’ desk, descending on the elevator, moving through the corridor. Then sunlight.

  Sunlight. It’s a miracle. It streams down from the cloudless sky like an emanation from the hand of God Himself. It makes Fred want to cry again, but Sherri bends over him, blocking his view, and presses a toy soldier into the hand that he has extended to pay homage to the sun.

  Fred forgets about the sun at once and looks at the soldier, recalling that he was a soldier once too. He wants to say that to Sherri and Jake, but the words that would enable him to do so are not available just now. He looks up at his daughter and grandson, eager to have them understand anyway, but they are both looking elsewhere.

  Fred’s time as a soldier was the most important time of his life, the time he kept going back to as the years passed. He killed men, and was willing to be killed, for his country. It was a heroic distinction, yet no one, not even Ellen, understood it. He was never able to comprehend the reluctance of men during the war in Vietnam to die for their country, and he despised them for that. They were not men at all. He despised Lizzie for sharing their attitude, for living in a commune, flitting across the land, going to college, acting as if the world wasn’t a battlefield, as if it wasn’t a serious place where you had to be on guard at all times, for flying away from him … his healthy little girl. And then, when this serious thing happened to her, she didn’t know how to deal with it. She didn’t know that wounded soldiers crawl away bleeding with their weapons in their hands.

  Jake’s eyes dart between the car and the nursing home windows. Eduardo gets out of the car and runs around it, his muscles evident beneath his shiny, tight jeans and white t-shirt. “Eduardo, this is my nephew,” Sherri begins.

  Eduardo cuts her off, saying, “No time for that now. Help me get him into the car. You realize this is kidnapping?”

  “Kidnapping! Cool!” exclaims Jake.

  Fred feels hands all over him. He doesn’t know what is happening. He growls, trying to resist, but he rises nonetheless and is placed in the car. The door is still opened, but he can’t escape because there is a tall, thin man out on the sidewalk folding up the wheelchair. He hears the trunk slam shut and feels the vibration. Someone closes his door as three other doors open. Three people slip in. “Were off!” the thin man cries. The other two repeat it so that it sounds to Fred like some kind of a prayer.

  Fred doesn’t like Eduardo. He doesn’t like anyone who has an ‘a’ or an ‘o’ at the end of an otherwise ordinary name. He doesn’t like his look and says to himself, So this is the kind of man my daughter dates. But then he doesn’t like Pete very much either, the man his healthy daughter married. Pete never engaged in combat, some nonsense about his heart. But at least Pete showed some interest in Fred’s combat experiences. Fred rolls his tongue around, searching for the word. All at once he finds it. “War!” he cries.

  “That’s right, man,” Eduardo says, beaming over his shoulder. They are speeding down the highway, jumping lanes, passing cars like skiers circumventing trees. “This is war all right. This is the brave against the cowards. We’re going to the Bronx Zoo, man. I know my way good. I used to live there. It could be dangerous, man. Someone might have seen us take off. We could have the police up our asses any minute. You said it, man. This is war. I hope you’re up to it.”

  Up to it? Who does the son of a bitch think he’s talking to? So this is war again. And this tall, thin man with the black eyes is fighting, apparently, on Fred’s side. Perhaps he’s even the unit leader, though Fred hates to think that he will have to kow-tow to someone whose skin is darker than his own. Still, an American is an American, a Jap a Jap. If this guy is an American, and a fighting one at that, then he’s okay. You forgive your comrades their skin colors and other differences when a war is on. Men are men, good guys and bad guys. Fred squeezes the little doll in his good hand.

  “Cool, man,” Jake says.

  Sherri says, “Let’s stop and get something to eat.”

  “Women,” Eduardo quips, fixing Fred with his mirror gaze. “You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em. Listen, lady. We got to at least get out of Jersey before we think about our stomachs.”

  That’s right, Fred thinks. You don’t think about food on the battlefield. Eduardo has it right. He decides he likes him after all. Women. You can’t live without ’em.

  The division is quiet for a time, each member thinking his and her own thoughts—or, as in Fred’s case, thinking of nothing at all. Then Jake sits forward and leans on the back of the front seat. “Aunt Sherri,” he says in a little boy voice that startles Fred, “What’s it really like to be a schizo?”

  Eduardo laughs and taps his fingernails on the steering wheel. He glances at Sherri and then throws his head back, laughing louder. Sherri cocks her head and arches her brows theatrically, the way she does when she is considering a fitting response. She rolls her bottom lip up and down a few times. “It’s fun,” she declares at last.

  “But how’s it like?” Jake insists.

  Sherri shrugs. “It’s not fun sometimes. I have to go to the doctor every month to get my prescription renewed. That ain’t too much fun. He asks me too much questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  Sherri shrugs and considers. “You know, dreams, secrets, people, if I like them or not, if they make me feel angry. If I still hear voices.”

  “Do you?”

  “I used to. Anti-psychotic medicine helps. When I hear them, I hum and they go away.”

  “What’s anti-psychotic medicine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do they say, the voices?”

  “Weird stuff. Like a radio’s playing, or a TV when you’re not in the room. They talk to each other. Weather, dumb things like that. Sometimes they tell me what to do. That’s when I hum. It works good.”

  “Do you feel angry ever? I mean really angry? Like you want to do stuff to get the person you’re angry at angry too?”

  “Everyone gets angry sometimes,” Sherri says.

  “Do you?” Eduardo asks, his black eyes sliding across the mirror.

  Jake opens his mouth, the movement of his lips revealing that he has more to say than his hesitation would account for. “Yeah,” he says at last. “I get angry at my old man.” He sits back, folds his arms, and looks out the window, seemingly satisfied with himself.

  “Why?” Eduardo demands.

  Jake tosses it off like it’s nothing more than a little dust. “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Why?”

  “He just doesn’t.” Jake glances at his grandfather who is looking out the window at the buildings whizzing by in the opposite direction, paying only enough attention to the chatter so that he will notice if the subject changes to war again.

  “My old man don’t like me either,” Eduardo says matter-of-factly.

  Jake sits up abruptly. “No? Why not?”

  Eduardo’s head lurches from side to side. “You know, I been in a couple of fights, scarred up a few faces, like that. He don’t understand. He moved away when I was little, got himself a good job in a meat-packing plant. Forgot what it was like to live on the streets, to walk on glass, to suck up gravel. Seeing me reminds him of what he don’t want to know no more. His loss. I don’t give a fuck.”

  “Yeah, man,” Jake says. “I know, I know what you mean. That’s how I feel exactly. Who gives a fuck? Like me, man. I did this thing by accident? My mother knows because she was there. My old m
an doesn’t know. But I think he suspects. I think that’s why he doesn’t … don’t … like me. It’s the exact same thing, man. He wants to forget it happened, but I remind him.”

  In the rear-view mirror Eduardo’s chin flashes, then his eyes, his brows arched above them. “Yeah, really, man? So what kind of accident?”

  Jake’s tongue skates back and forth over his retainer. He is breathing rapidly from his nose, his chest hoisting with each expulsion. “I killed my sister.”

  “Say what?”

  “I killed my sister. An accident.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “It happened when we were little.”

  “So if your old man suspects it, why don’t you just lay it out for him like it was—an accident. Lay your cards right out on the table. That’s what I do with my old man. Call his bluff. If he’s going to go around hating you for something he thinks you did, call his bluff. If he can’t take it, well then fuck him then, man.”

  Jake glances at his grandfather, who is still looking out the window, then turns back to Eduardo. “Yeah, fuck him if he can’t take it.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Clear the air. If he can’t take it, fuck him.”

  “Yeah, fuck him if he can’t take it. That’s all. Just plain fuck him.”

  Jake smiles broadly. Eduardo catches his smile in the mirror and laughs. Sherri turns around, grinning. “You gonna tell him all that?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Clear the air. I’m gonna tell him, man.”