Mad Girls In Love

by Michael Lee West

While Alice Ann entertained Jennifer, I filled out applications at restaurants along the water—they all needed cooks, but they were filled up on waitresses. Around noon, I emerged from a little tea shop, shaking my head. “They’ve got Ph.D.s waiting tables in there,” I told Alice Ann. “In case you don’t know, that’s a fancy degree—”

  “I know what it is. My mama told me.”

  “Okay, what does it stand for?” I shot her a dubious look.

  “Please help, dahling?”

  I laughed, thinking of my own mother’s storehouse of malapropisms and mispronunciations: tuna was “albatross” and she called Chicago “She-CAR-go.”

  Our next stop had gas lanterns burning on either side of the door. Alice Ann asked if it was a funeral home, but I said no, that it was a fancy eating spot. I pointed to a gold plaque that was hammered into the brick wall. The Embers, it said. I pulled open a heavy wrought-iron door and we stepped into pure blackness. A man with hairy arms materialized out of the gloom, and Alice Ann dropped back, the baby in her arms, ducking behind a rubber plant. The man led me to a little red booth, half hidden by a lattice screen. When I leaned to the right, I could see Alice Ann squatting next to the plant, holding the squirming baby and trying not to draw attention, even though a mean-looking waiter kept passing by, giving her harsh glances. He disappeared through a door, and Alice Ann shot away from the rubber plant and across the room, hiding under a table with a long white cloth.

  “What position are you applying for?” the man asked.

  “I’ll do anything—cook, wait tables, sweep floors,” I said.

  The hairy man just smiled. “Our salad chef is from New Orleans,” he said. “And our pastry chef comes to us from the CIA.”

  My lips parted. The CIA? I couldn’t imagine a little place like Point Minette having a spy cook the desserts.

  “Most of our waiters have been here for five years or more,” the hairy man added.

  “Oh,” I said, and my face fell. “I didn’t realize.”

  “You might want to try Le Cordon Bleu. Tell Mrs. Bianchi I sent you.”

  We stepped out of The Embers into bright sun that smelled of cotton candy and turned down a narrow, brick-lined street where all the doors were painted bright colors. I stopped in front of a shop with a turquoise door. Then I reached down, pulled off my shoe, and turned it upside down. A tiny pebble fell to the sidewalk.

  “We need to go back to Mrs. Finch’s and tell her that we made a mistake,” I said. “Maybe she’ll give us back our rent. Even if she gives us half the money, it’ll be better than staying here and starving to death.”

  “I don’t need to eat,” Alice Ann said, shoving the baby into my arms. “I’m getting fat as a hog. Don’t make us leave, not yet.” She skipped along the sidewalk and rounded a corner, then dropped out of sight. A moment later she let out an excited squeal. I tightened my arms around Jennifer and drew in a deep breath. Alice Ann sped back around the corner, her eyes shining with excitement. “I found the restaurant,” she hollered, windmilling her arms. “Hurry!”

  To celebrate my new job, we ate lunch at an expensive tearoom on a shady street. Miss Nina’s it said on the sign. We really couldn’t afford this treat, but at least I had a job. I was just a lowly cook’s apprentice, but I had to start somewhere.

  After lunch, we took the long way home, walking barefoot along the beach. The gulf was on one side, hotels and filling stations on the other, in between mansions, all of them built to resemble quaint cottages, with roses spilling over the fences. The sun was straight overhead, making the water glow with a strange radiance. Alice Ann said that angels were skimming over the surface, and their wings shed glitter. I just laughed. For all I knew, it might be glitter, because Point Minette was within spitting distance of New Orleans and the water was full of strange things that had floated up, coasters from Pat O’Brien’s, plastic drinking cups, Jax bottles.

  When the seawall ended, we cut over to the sidewalk. I lifted Jennifer high into the air. The baby giggled. We hurried past a stucco motel and an adjoining coffee shop, where tourists gazed through the plate-glass window. Next door, a condominium complex was under construction. I hated to walk past it because of the workmen. As we passed by, their cat-calls blended in with the screeching gulls.

  “Will you wait tables or cook?” Alice Ann asked. “You never said.”

  She had fit her shoes on her hands like puppets.

  “No, they’re training me to cook. I’m starting out in salads, but I may work my way up to seafood.” My polka-dot dress rippled around my knees and the baby reached down to grab it.

  “Too bad they won’t let you make cakes.” Alice Ann began trudging through the sand.

  “Don’t step on any glass,” I said. The wind kicked up my dress again, and when I reached down to smooth it, another gust caught the hem from behind, filling the skirt with air like a balloon around my hips. From the road, a man on a red motorcycle revved his motor, then yelled out, “Hey, you big-assed gal!”

  I slapped the fabric with my free hand, desperately trying to deflate it. “I am not big-assed,” I said through my teeth. But I really was. I just had this tendency for all of my weight to settle there.

  Alice Ann stopped to watch. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but you are apple-butted.”

  A blue Datsun slowed down to stare, and a burly-necked man in sunglasses leaned out his head. “Hey, lady!” he shouted. “You! Blondie! I’ll give you a free ride if you give me one! Whaddaya say?”

  “Don’t ever marry a Southern man, Alice Ann,” I told her. “When you get grown, find you a nice man from New Jersey.”

  “I’m never getting married,” Alice Ann said, skipping to keep up with me. “But I bet you will.”

  “No, I’m through with men,” I said, turning back to look at Alice Ann. Her hair blew across her face, cobwebbing in her mouth.

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Alice Ann. “When Mrs. Bianchi was showing you around, there was an oyster shucker looking you up and down. The one with the tattoo and a gold tooth.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said. “I need a paycheck, not trouble.”

  We walked up the sandy path to the boardinghouse. Despite what Mrs. Finch had said about students, at the moment all the other boarders were women who had been abandoned by their men—death, divorce, disappearances at sea. It was a hotel for widows and I felt safe there. I could see the ladies sitting in metal chairs, sipping frothy pink drinks. They seemed always to be drinking something, or else sipping from bottles of cherry cough syrup. Kenny lay curled up in Mrs. Finch’s lap. When he saw us approach, his ears perked.

  “You, Lillian!” called Mrs. Finch. “Come have a cool drink with us.”

  “Another time,” I said. “These girls need a nap. But thank you.”

  As we headed up the back stairs, I glanced back at the widows. I longed to join them, even though I wasn’t much of a drinker, but in two seconds flat I’d be telling the women my life story, concluding with the afternoon I’d left town. I would tell them my real name and how Claude’s mysterious absence from the bank had led to violence. I would describe the hibachi in detail, along with Claude’s black Labrador, and the baby back ribs. But the very idea of a confession, even a drunken one, filled me with despair. I’d never thought of food—except for mayonnaise—as a murder weapon: potato salad incubating in a blue bowl, deviled eggs souring beneath a broiling summer sun. Now I saw danger everywhere. If frozen ribs could break a man’s nose, then a frozen pound cake might crush a skull.

  That night I lay awake in the boardinghouse, imagining a new kind of criminal, people robbing banks with frozen pork tenderloins, kielbasa sausage, or ears of corn. But my mind turned back to those brief days when Claude, Jennifer, and I had lived together as a family. In my mind’s eye, I could almost see our little house brooding in the pitch-black darkness, and outside the fireflies would skim in the knee-high grass. The coals in the hibachi would still be burning, the feathery particles wafting in
the night air.

  A LETTER FROM DOROTHY MCDOUGAL

  September 4, 1972

  Dear Clancy Jane,

  You should’ve told me about Bitsy. Imagine my shock, seeing my daughter’s picture on the asylum TV. Actually it was Channel 5 News, and the anchorman, Chris Clark, called Bitsy a dangerous fugitive. I was sitting on a ratty day-room sofa, one that dated back to the Eisenhower administration, and I kept staring at the TV. Fugitive? I thought. Then I made the mistake of hollering out, “She’s no such thing! Why, she’d never break the law!”

  Two nurses ran out of their glass cubicle and grabbed my arms. The skinny one asked why I was yelling. I pointed to the TV. Bitsy’s face was gone, replaced with a Mr. Clean commercial. “My daughter was on TV,” I said. “I swear she was!”

  “Calm down, Mrs. McDougal,” said the other nurse. She reached up to adjust her red wig.

  I tried to explain, but they began quizzing me. They asked the day of the week and the date, but I didn’t know. It’s easy to lose track of time in Central State. “It’s September something,” I finally said. Next, they wanted to know how long my daughter had been inside the TV. Hadn’t they been listening? I rolled my eyes and said, “For the last time, her picture was on the news. They all but called her a criminal.”

  The nurses exchanged glances. “Not that sweet little blond girl who comes to visit?” asked the skinny nurse.

  “You must be a tad confused,” said the redheaded one. “It’s unlikely that your daughter would be on the news.”

  “Well, she WAS,” I yelled. The nurses signaled an orderly, who slapped me onto a gurney and rolled me down the hall into a green-tiled room. It was filled with masked people. Thinking this was a stickup, I raised my hands and told them I had money in my pocketbook. I told them to take it all, but please don’t shoot. They held me down and glued wires to my head. I screamed for my son, for Jesus Christ, but the nurses wouldn’t let go. All I could think of was Frankenstein, the mad doctor lifting Boris Karloff up into the skylight, into the crackling thunderstorm. Years ago I had paid good money to see that movie with my girl friends, but now I was living it. I was my own “Creature Feature.”

  Shock treatments are worse than pulling out your own eyebrows, worse than a home permanent gone wrong. The so-called treatment singed some hairs off my head and left bald spots. I thought the doctors would notice and think I might have mange, not hallucinations. They’d say I needed a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist.

  They wanted me to admit that my daughter hadn’t been on TV, that I was making it up. But I shouldn’t have to tell lies. And I shouldn’t have to get treatments that I don’t need. If it keeps up, they’ll just have to kill me. Well, maybe not. Before I leave this world, I’d like a guarantee that heaven will accept me. Then I’d have to see a menu. Here at Central State, the food is terrible except for desserts. So don’t tell me the State of Tennessee isn’t making a profit. God wouldn’t be greedy and serve cheap food. Heaven must have little bakery shops full of praline cheesecakes, and cute little open-air markets with tropical fruits and frozen daiquiris. Everything’s free, of course.

  The doctors kept harping on my so-called TV vision. I got huffy and told them to call Channel 5 and ask Chris Clark about Bitsy. They didn’t. They asked if I’d had other visions. “Just sugarplums,” I said, trying to be cute. “And they dance in my head.”

  A big mistake. The doctors snapped their fingers and the uniformed orderly with the gurney came and whisked me back to the E.C.T. room. And now I’m having trouble remembering things. Like how to multiply and divide. But I know enough to be upset with you, Clancy Jane. Every bit of this could’ve been avoided if you’d had the decency to drive up here and break the news about Bitsy IN PERSON. I would appreciate it if you’d call them up and explain. I’d give you the telephone number, but it has been fried out of my brain.

  Your sister,

  Dorothy

  Dorothy

  Dr. Patterson’s office was at the end of a long, green-tiled hall. When Dorothy stepped inside, the doctor was sitting at his desk, writing in a notebook. His black eyeglasses slid down to the tip of his nose. Dorothy leaned forward, ready to catch them, but somehow they stayed affixed to his nose. Dr. Patterson waved at a stiff-backed chair, and she sat down, folding her hands on her knees, watching him scribble away in the book. Their shrinking sessions always began with him asking the same question. “How are we today, Dorothy?” Like they were Siamese twins, sharing the same brain—or worse, sharing the same delusions.

  The doctor shut the notebook. The chair squeaked as he swiveled around. “How are we today, Dorothy?”

  “Pretty good,” she said, repressing a smile. “Considering that I’m glowing in the dark.”

  “Glowing?” Dr. Patterson’s eyebrows shot up.

  “It’s a joke,” Dorothy said. Didn’t he get it? Hadn’t Patterson been the one to order the shock therapy? The doctor flashed a suspicious glance, then turned back to his desk and opened the notebook. He jotted something down. Without looking at Dorothy, he said, “I spoke with your sister this morning—Mrs. Clancy Jane Falk.”

  “I know her name.” Dorothy nodded. At least that hadn’t been fried out of her brain. Not yet, anyway.

  “She cleared up the little misunderstanding about your missing daughter.”

  “Little misunderstanding?” Dorothy’s right thumb twitched. It had begun after the last shock treatment.

  “Mrs. Falk also mentioned your long-standing feud.”

  “She actually called it a feud?” Dorothy felt an urge to rub her eyebrows, but she couldn’t because she’d plucked them out years ago. They’d never grown back—just her luck.

  “Perhaps sibling rivalry might be a more accurate term.” The doctor smiled. “How did it begin?”

  Dorothy twisted her mouth to one side. “Didn’t my sister tell you?”

  “I’d like to hear your version.”

  “I see.” She had copied this phrase from him, and she could tell that he didn’t like it. But she couldn’t worry about that, because her thumb was twitching again, much like a bank teller counts dollar bills.

  “Have you forgotten?” Dr. Patterson cocked his head.

  “No, it’s just that I’m afraid to tell my side of any story. Look what happened to me the other day, when I saw my daughter’s face on TV. Nobody believed me. And then y’all—”

  “Yes, yes,” the doctor said impatiently, “but I want to know your version.”

  “Fine. But it may take a few hours.”

  “Why don’t you compile a list, itemizing your sister’s positive and negative traits. And bring it to the next session.”

  “But I’ve got the list in my head. Can’t we get started now? Her number-one bad trait is coldheartedness. But I won’t start at the very beginning, which is the day Clancy Jane was born—that was in 1938, by the way, and it would be a very long story. Because all Southern women are born with the long-winded chromosome. I must have two of them, so I’ll just speed things up. I’ll start in 1953. Back then, I was a happily married woman with two children—Mack and Bitsy. She’s the one I saw on TV? But my son is so much cuter. And sweeter. But anyway, in 1953, I was a twenty-one-year-old mother of two, and my sister was fifteen. Miss Everything at Crystal Falls High. Then she got mixed up with a hoodlum named Hart Jones. He was the captain of the football team. And he got Clancy Jane pregnant. They eloped. It nearly killed our mother.”

  “Yes, but I fail to see how that’s coldhearted, and besides, our session—”

  “I’m not finished—didn’t I tell you it would take hours? You’d best cancel the rest of your appointments so you can hear me out. Anyway, Clancy Jane and Mother had a big fight. This was real unusual for them. Up to that point, they’d been close. So Clancy Jane and the hoodlum left town. I don’t know where all they went. Seven months later, we got a postcard from Louisiana, saying that Clancy Jane’s baby had been born. It was a girl, Violet. But we couldn’t write back, because m
y sister hadn’t put a return address.

  “We didn’t hear a peep out of her for five years. Mother was beside herself. She got real skinny. I tried to give her extra attention, but she’d just snap my head off. I guess her nerves were bad. I was upset with my sister for causing this. Anybody with a soul wouldn’t let months and years go by without one word to her family. Then one day in 1958, Clancy Jane just turned up. A beat-up car pulled into the driveway—Mother and I lived next door to each other and we shared a big, old driveway. Anyway, the car had Louisiana license plates.”

  “That’s interesting, Dorothy, but—”

  “You’re probably wondering if Clancy Jane was my mother’s favorite? Well, she was.”

  “Dorothy—”

  “And you’re thinking that I felt slighted. It’s true.” She knew she was talking too much, knew he wanted to get away, but he’d asked for it, hadn’t he? Or maybe this was a trap. Maybe this was a test to see just how crazy she really was. She put her hands over her mouth and said, “Just listen to me rattling on. Is this a bad sign?”

  “No, Dorothy,” said Dr. Patterson. “It’s not bad. You have a lot of emotions churning inside. I’m developing a theory that you are terrified of not being loved. But we’ll have to save this issue for our next session.”

  “Oh, phooey. We’re on a roll.”

  “I know. But it’ll have to wait. And don’t forget to make a list of positives and negatives.” He turned back to his desk and opened the notebook, signaling that their shrinking session was over.

  Dorothy got out of the chair and started to leave. “Dr. Patterson?”