Mad Girls In Love

by Michael Lee West

  “I just saw Violet,” she said, taking a sip. “She’s in a lot of pain, but at least she’s sober. By the way, we had your car towed. It’s in pretty bad shape.”

  From the hallway, I heard a rattling sound. A nurse was pushing a medicine cart, the wheels ticking against the tile. “I can see her again in eight more minutes,” Aunt Clancy said. “You, too. The doctor said she can leave the hospital in a week. Of course, she’s raising hell to leave now. She’s got a whopping hangover—I bet you do, too—and she’s busting a gut to get back to Knoxville.”

  “Will she be able to finish the fall quarter?” I asked.

  “I sure hope so,” said Aunt Clancy. “If she doesn’t, she’ll drive us all crazy.”

  Six days later, Violet was pitching a fit. “I demand to be discharged!” she yelled and raised her face from the sheet, glaring at the nurses. “I’m missing classes. I can’t afford to get behind. I have a scholarship and I can’t lose it.”

  I was sitting at the foot of Violet’s bed, wearing a paper gown and mask, trying not to laugh; but I didn’t fool my cousin, not for a second. “What’s so funny?” Violet said crossly.

  “You said behind.” I smiled behind the mask, and Aunt Clancy’s eyes crinkled in the corners.

  “A subliminal slip.” Violet turned on her side and winced. Since she was the patient, she didn’t wear a mask. “Look, I’m not in the mood for any drunk-on-her-ass jokes. So don’t you start.”

  “I won’t.”

  Byron and the strange-talking doctor walked into the room, swathed in paper gowns and masks, and they said that Violet was in no condition to attend classes, or to involve herself in any sort of physical activity that required long periods of sitting.

  “I’ll stand,” Violet said. “I’ll buy a rubber doughnut. Bitsy had one of those after Jennifer was born. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, and it helped,” I said. “I can come to Knoxville with you. Drive you around. Carry your books. Hey, maybe we can drive over to Pigeon Forge and see Daddy.”

  After Byron, Aunt Clancy, and the other doctor left, Violet turned to me. “Honey, I love you. And you did the right thing bringing me here. But I don’t want you coming to Knoxville. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long, long time. I got myself into this mess, I’ll get myself out.”

  “But I could stay with you for a few days, just to make sure you’re—”

  “Bitsy, I’m a survivor. And besides, you wouldn’t like Knoxville.”

  “Why not?” I asked, trying not to sound offended. But I couldn’t help it. What did she mean? That I would embarrass her?

  “It’s faster-paced than Crystal Falls. And some of the girls are snooty and fashion-conscious. Oh, don’t make a face. Shit, now I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head. “You didn’t. It was just an idea. I understand how you feel.”

  “And how is that?” Violet’s eyes widened.

  “You love me, but you’re ashamed of me. Your fluffy little cousin.”

  “Little? You’re larger than life.” She laughed. “In some places, you’re too big for your own good.”

  “Rub it in, Violent,” I said, patting my hips.

  “I’m referring to your heart, not your ass.” She grabbed my hands. “It’s as big as a whale’s.”

  ROWAN, VAN CLEAVE, HARLOW, AND GRIFFIN, PLLC

  ATTORNEYS ATLAW

  600 First Avenue

  Crystal Falls, Tennessee

  PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL

  October 14, 1973

  Lillian B. Wentworth

  214 Dixie Avenue

  Crystal Falls, Tennessee

  Dear Ms. Wentworth:

  It has come to our attention that you were recently involved in risqué behavior, resulting in the personal injury of Violet Jane Jones. Therefore, all visitations with minor child, Jennifer Wentworth (“CHILD”) will be discontinued until further notice. If you have questions, please contact this office. Under no circumstances are you to contact Mr. Claude E. Wentworth III, Mrs. Claude E. Wentworth III, or Mr. Claude E. Wentworth IV (“CLIENTS”) or legal action, such as a restraining order, may be required. Additionally, all letters to CHILD and CLIENTS must cease or harassment charges will be forthcoming.

  Sincerely yours,

  Arthur P. Van Cleave III

  The interdiction lasted not quite two and a half months, until Miss Betty couldn’t find a babysitter, and she’d planned a big shopping trip to Atlanta. Chick called Bitsy and said he’d already called his lawyers and told them that the visitations could resume. When Chick showed up at 214 Dixie, Jennifer was wearing a black bouclé coat with a Chanel flower pinned to the lapel.

  Bitsy knew something was wrong the minute she took Jennifer into her arms. The baby’s cheeks were ruddy, her eyes glazed and shiny, and she was burning up. “Chick wait,” Bitsy called after him, “this baby is sick,” but he was already out the door. He climbed into his black Mercedes and drove off. Clancy Jane found the thermometer, and Jennifer had a temperature of 103.6. This was child abuse. Byron pressed his stethoscope to the baby’s chest. He let Bitsy listen, too, and it sounded all crackly, like dry leaves. He said Jennifer had bronchitis and he’d call in some antibiotics at the Rexall, but that it might take a while for them to kick in. He was right. Jennifer woke up in the night with a tight, raspy cough. Bitsy carried her into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. Then she sat on the floor, the baby in her lap, and waited for her to fall asleep. By morning, Jennifer was beginning to breathe without struggling.

  Bitsy was furious at the Wentworths, not to mention their lawyers. She complained to her aunt that the legal definition of unfit seemed to change to suit Miss Betty’s schedule. A few more days without treatment, and Jennifer would have ended up in the hospital. That’s what Byron had said. Bitsy started to fire off a letter to Arthur P. Van Cleave III, but Clancy Jane stopped her. “You’ll only make things more difficult for yourself, honey.”

  “Can it get any worse?”

  “Always,” said Clancy Jane. “You’ve got too much on you. I think you need a little vacation. I can manage without you at the café.”

  So, the next weekend, Bitsy borrowed Aunt Clancy’s car and drove up to see Violet, who was well enough to go barhopping. Under the black, twinkling stars in the Holiday Inn lounge, the cousins danced with traveling salesmen. Men from Tulsa, Cincinnati, Santa Fe, Mobile, Little Rock. Their accents were as varied as the mixed drinks they ordered from the bar—illegally, since Knox County was a dry county.

  As they were driving back to the dorm, Violet said, “We should buy a wall-size map and stick colored pins in it.”

  “To keep track of the war?” Bitsy asked.

  “No, to keep track of all the men we’ve danced with.”

  “I kinda enjoyed myself,” Bitsy said, surprising herself. “Not that we could ever do this back home. Miss Betty would ruin me.”

  “Honey, she already has,” said Violet. “But that’s no reason to stop having fun.”

  A NOTE FROM BITSY

  Dear Jennifer,

  All the lawyers in Tennessee can’t keep me from writing you. The problem is your grandparents’ lawyers have forbidden me to mail you any letters. So your Great Aunt Clancy Jane bought me a carved rosewood box, and I’m keeping all my correspondence inside it. Then one day you can maybe read the letters and decide for yourself if I was a bad mother.

  I love you,

  Mama

  Part 3

  Bitsy

  The summer of 1974 marked the end of my celibacy. I owed it all to the new Winn Dixie. At the grand opening, I won a door prize, a free dental checkup, along with my choice of a complimentary tooth cleaning or one cavity filled. When it came to dentistry, my motto was: If it doesn’t hurt, don’t fix it. I guess I wasn’t the only one with this philosophy, because down at the Green Parrot, I tried to give the coupon away, but nobody wanted it. Byron said he’d never heard of the dentist, Walter Saylor Jr., DDS, but he advised me t
o hang on to the certificate. I stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it, until the first week in June, when I got a toothache.

  The wreck with Violet had totaled my Mustang, so I walked everywhere. Dr. Saylor’s office was a squatty red brick building with casement windows. A breeze stirred the sign, making it swing back and forth, WALTER SAYLOR, DDS. I almost turned around, because my tooth had stopped aching yesterday, at the exact moment I’d made the appointment; but then I considered my finances and changed my mind. So I hurried inside—the waiting room was filled up—and I hastily wrote my name and appointment time on a pad. A gray-haired receptionist asked me to fill out a patient information form. I found an empty chair and propped the clipboard on my knees, scribbling out my name, date of birth, and next of kin.

  Finally my name was called and I was led down a pink-and-brown tiled corridor that smelled of peppermint into a small room with a mural on one wall, featuring a waterfall, trees, and a rushing river. On the opposite wall was a glass block window. As I settled into the padded chair, which just happened to match the tile floor, I wondered why a dentist would need to obscure a view of the outside world and provide a fake one. I sure hoped it was to protect the patient’s privacy rather than to hide barbaric techniques.

  A drill whined in the background, and a heavy-lidded nurse put my chart in the door, then clipped a paper bib around my neck. Pinned to her chest was a white badge with her name spelled out in black letters, Patricia Eller. “Ma’am, I think I made a mistake coming here,” I said, looking up at her huge forehead, which slanted like a shelf of rock, throwing her eyes into shadow. She resembled a Cro-Magnon, like the sketches I’d seen in Violet’s anthropology textbook.

  “Mistake?” She blinked. Her thick eyelids were dusted with turquoise powder.

  “My tooth isn’t hurting anymore.” I started to rise from the chair. “So I’ll just be going.”

  “Don’t be scared, dear. Dr. Saylor is known as the painless dentist. Just sit tight. He’ll be in here directly.” She patted my arm, then turned on her heels and scurried out of the room, firmly closing the door behind her to block my escape.

  I shut my eyes and listened to the piped-in music that wafted all around me. It wasn’t old-fogey elevator music, either, but contemporary rock—Deep Purple was singing “Woman From Tokyo.” After a long while, the drill stopped. I hadn’t heard any muffled cries or outright screaming, so I began to relax. Finally the dentist stepped into my room, accompanied by the Cro-Magnon nurse. He looked old, at least thirty, and he had bushy red hair which was styled into a white man’s Afro. His eyebrows were arched and wiry, setting off his pale, chalky skin—in fact, he looked as if he suffered from a serious blood deficiency.

  “So,” he said, glancing at my chart, “Bitsy Wentworth—is that Mrs. or Ms.?”

  “Ms.,” I said. “And I think I have a cavity.”

  “Alrighty.” He picked up a long instrument with a round mirror at the end. “Can you open up wide for me?”

  I shut my eyes and felt his fingers pull back my lips. “Hmm,” he said, sliding the mirror along my gum, “not so bad.”

  “Rwelly?” I said around his fingers, and then I felt foolish.

  “You have beautiful teeth.” The dentist leaned closer, blinking at my incisors. “Did you wear braces?”

  I nodded, but I was a little unnerved by his intense gaze. His eyes were brown with yellow slashes. He took the mirror from my mouth and then fixed me with a smile.

  “Who did them?” he asked. “Your braces, I mean.”

  “Dr. Throckenberry,” I said.

  “He’s retired.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’d be more than happy to be your dentist,” he said. “If you’re a student—are you one?—anyway, I give students a discount.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.

  He fixed me with a broad smile and tapped his teeth. “Caps,” he said. “But I didn’t do them myself. Now, open up wide again. Good. Oh, that’s just great.”

  He placed a long Q-tip against my gum. First, I tasted something sweet, then my mouth began to go numb. The dentist faced the counter and I heard the clinking of instruments. “I’m just going to put your tooth to sleep,” he said, and the nurse held out a hypodermic needle. He grabbed hold of my upper lip, then I felt something sharp prick my gum; the doctor began to shake my lip back and forth.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked in a concerned voice.

  I managed to garble out a “nuh-uh.”

  “No?” he asked, and the nurse put a suction tube next to my tongue. It made a loud, gargling noise.

  “Mmmhum,” I managed to say. It looked like a dentist would know better than to strike up a conversation with an incapacitated woman. From somewhere behind me, a phone trilled. The dentist sighed, but he kept injecting medicine into my gum.

  “Mrs. Eller,” he said calmly, “would you please see who’s buzzing me? And tell them that I’m with a patient.”

  “Certainly, Dr. Saylor.” She nodded and stepped out of the room. Then he leaned closer.

  “Would you like to have dinner and see a movie?” he whispered.

  I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. Even if I had, I was afraid to answer, since the needle was still lodged in my gum, and the suction tube was slurping up Lord knew what. He seemed to sense my dilemma, and he removed the needle. Then he hovered over my face, the yellow eyes glowing.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?” He lifted those crazy eyebrows. “So, will you go?”

  This dentist was too mouthy for his own good. Once the word got around that he was hitting on the patients, he’d be ruined. I plucked the tube out of my mouth and held it aloft. “You’re asking me on a date?”

  “Yes, I guess I am,” he said, looking sheepish.

  “Can a dentist do that?”

  “I don’t normally. In fact, I’ve never done it. See, I’m going through a divorce, and I—well, I’m not sure what I thought. I hope I haven’t scared you.”

  Scared wasn’t half of it. My brow tensed up, and I focused at the wall mural, the water flowing endlessly into the river. Rod Stewart began to sing “It’s All Over Now,” from the Gasoline Alley album, which I recognized from Aunt Clancy’s collection. As I listened to Rod, I tried to come up with a polite reply. I sure didn’t want to make him angry before he filled my tooth. What if he hit a nerve? On purpose. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, not to take it personally, but I just wasn’t interested—not in him or anybody. All my energy centered around the café and the visits with my daughter. But then, I’d have to explain why I didn’t have custody, and I wasn’t in the mood to confess to a dentist.

  “Thank you for the invitation,” I began, rubbing my face. It was starting to feel numb and rubbery. “But I’m sorry, I don’t date.”

  “Oh, oh.” He looked surprised, then he nodded, as if he’d figured it out. “You’re already involved with someone?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re not involved, then you’re free to date me. Is that correct?”

  “I don’t think you understand. I no longer date men.” I frowned. That didn’t sound right, and I wondered if I’d only confused him more or if I’d made a faux pas.

  “May I ask why?” he asked, his eyes bobbling.

  “It’s a long story.” I glanced at my watch, a gift from Violet. It had a pink strap and Cinderella face, and her arms pointed at the three and the six. “And I’m in sort of a rush.”

  “I guess you stay busy, don’t you? A pretty little thing like you.” He paused, and I knew he was waiting for an answer. But I couldn’t explain, and I decided not to try. He began to fiddle with his drill, fitting it with a new bit, or whatever it’s called. It looked bigger than necessary, and my heart began to thud.

  He glanced coolly at me and said, “Are you numb?”

  “Excuse me?” I blinked. If he was asking if I’d become desensitized toward the male species, the answer was yes, but it wasn’t any of his business.
I thought back to the door prize and wished I hadn’t set foot at the Winn Dixie.

  “Your tooth,” he said. “Is it numb yet?”

  “Oh, that.” I reached up, felt my face again. “I think so.”

  “Are you free this Saturday?”

  “Actually, no,” I said, and he looked crestfallen. So I quickly added, “I’ve got family obligations.”

  “All weekend?”

  “Er, yes. I’m tied up both Friday and Saturday,” I said. What I felt wasn’t revulsion; it was more like the opposite of attraction.

  “Are you free Sunday?” He persisted. “We can have breakfast. Or would you prefer brunch?”

  He was bullying me. I shot him a disgusted look. Didn’t he understand that no meant no? Maybe he was equally unclear about the meaning of yes. Wait a minute—that could be my excuse. “Sure, I’ll have breakfast,” I lied. Then I quickly added, “If my tooth isn’t hurting, that is.”

  I promised to meet him Sunday morning at the Caney Fork Truck Stop, then he reached for the drill and began whittling away at my tooth, enamel dust wafting in the air. When I got home, I found Aunt Clancy in the garden picking green tomatoes, wrapping each one in crinkly paper. She looked as if she’d just returned from the café. She was wearing her usual funky garb—an embroidered cotton blouse and cutoffs. Around her waist was a fringed suede belt. In August, she would turn thirty-six, but she could pass for a much younger woman. Her hair hung past her shoulders, and it was tinted Dusty Blonde, the long layers melding together. As she moved, her earrings glinted in the late afternoon sun.