by Lois Walden
‘You will die,
You will die.’
I drove down one dark canyon road and up another. Some force greater than myself guided me home. The raging demons screamed louder:
‘You will die!
You will die!
You will die!’
I ran into the house, opened the refrigerator door, grabbed all the eggs, dumped them one by one down the garbage disposal until they swirled out of this world. I shoved a piece of nova deep into my throat, opened cupboards, found a two-year-old jar of Planters peanuts, flipped open the lid, chug-a-lugged the rancid nuts as fast as I could.
In the bedroom … The demons. Gray slime slid along the hardwood hall floors. Smoke filled the air. Voices screamed: ‘You will die … you will die … you will die’… I am dying. I wanted to die.
Door slammed … mind split. I reached for the Valium in the medicine chest … five … ten … fifteen milligrams. Is this how my mother felt? Is this how she died? I sat in a hot bathtub filled with lavender bath salts. I sweated, screamed, sobbed until completely empty, crawled into bed. Shaking. At four a.m. I reached for the telephone to call my old psychiatrist, Dr Guttman. The answering service picked up.
‘Hello, this is Dr Guttman’s exchange.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Doctor Guttman will be away until August 29th.’
It was August 2nd. ‘My name’s Loli Greene. I need to speak to him right away! Please?’
‘I’m sorry, but Dr Guttman left strict instructions. He is not to be disturbed, unless it is an absolute emergency.’
‘Is suicide enough of an emergency? Is it?! I swear on my … I swear to God I will kill myself if you don’t get him on the phone. I mean it!’
Pause. ‘Hold please.’ Centuries went by…
‘Loli?’
‘Dr Guttman?’
‘Loli, it is four a.m. in California. What seems to be the problem?’
‘I’m losing my … The demons … If I take too much Valium, I’ll die like my mother did … Please. Please come back now. Please.’
‘Now listen to me, Loli. Calm down. Listen to me. I can’t come back, but I can call up one of my colleagues, Dr Dot. He will get you through this crisis. Just calm down. Breathe. Take another five milligrams of Valium, a hot lavender bath …’
‘I already did that.’
‘Do it again. Go to the medicine cabinet, take a Valium, run the bath, and breathe.’
‘They’re after me.’
‘Nothing is after you. You are going to be fine. Hang up the phone so that I can call Dr Dot. Remember, breathe and bathe.’
‘Breathe and bathe.’
‘You’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll see you in September. Until then, I think it would be wise if you saw Dr Dot on an everyday basis.’
‘Are you sure that his office will remember to call?’
‘I’m positive. Now hang up, Loli. Good night.’
‘Good night, Dr Guttman.’ Click.
The one and only reason August is a wicked month is that all of the finest psychiatrists in America gather on Cape Cod. They play Frisbee and frolic near the water’s edge while psychotic patients spend thirty-one days anxiously awaiting their return. On August 1st at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time, a severe and sudden agitation develops in the astral planes, because millions of helpless, hopeless Americans cannot deal with their psychiatric withdrawal. Nothing can be done about this, unless one is willing to throw oneself, one’s angst, and all of one’s hysteria into the psychiatric arms of an inept stranger.
Dr Dot was my inept stranger. For the longest twenty-nine days of our lives, we were thrown together, while Dr Guttman rode the waves on old Cape Cod.
Drive at Your Own Risk
’03
Because I was so eager to get myself to Beatrice, I was thwarted by Cedar Falls, twin town to Waterloo (telling name), Iowa. The twin towns were located in the middle of a middle state in the middle of nowhere. I was beginning to feel and look like my red rolling bag.
By March of 2003, NASDAQ has lost approximately seventy-eight per cent of its market value. The S&P 500 has lost forty-nine per cent of its net worth. I am interested in these financial facts because, unfortunately, I am my father’s daughter. He was a stockbroker. There had been cutbacks, shutdowns, kickbacks for the rich, and all kinds of costly shenanigans. The arts are not a priority with our present administration.
No, this is the ‘not one child will be left behind’ administration. No child will be left behind but not one theater, music, art, or dance program will be left alive. The young adult will have the thrill of struggling through ‘How to take a test’. He might never understand the content of the test, but he will learn the tricks to passing it, so he can forge ahead, making his community and country proud when he enlists in the marines and learns about life and death while fighting for his country under fire. He will never learn about the likes of Picasso, Eugene O’Neill, Sarah Bernhardt, Nijinsky, Copeland, Bach or even Pink Floyd. He will learn math and science. He will add, but art will be subtracted from his life …
Because of the situation in schools around the country, I have a job. Because of the massive budget cuts at the already bankrupt theater company is why, on March 3rd at seven p.m. I ended up at the Pennysaver Motel. Behind the dilapidated desk sat Becky (name tag pinned over her Pennysaver pocket), a rotund perky person, eating a bag of pork rinds and drinking a Pepsi Light. Slowly she turned:
‘Hi. You must be Loli Greene?’
‘How’d you know that?’
‘It’s mostly hunters and truckers stay here. You’re the only girl to walk through that door in days … ’cept me. Name’s Becky.’
‘Hi Becky.’ I notice the many deer heads on the wall, one of which is missing an eye. Can’t stop staring at the eye hole.
‘Bullet went right through its eye.’ I cringe. ‘Amazing huh? We gotta great jacuzzi. You’re gonna love it. Sign right here. You’re in room sixty-nine. Don’t you just love that number?’ I am speechless. ‘You have to carry your bags down those stairs. It’s real quiet down there.’
Apprehensively, I look at the red metal stairwell. ‘It’s below ground level?’
‘Oh yeah. It’s underground. Stuart Manly said you wanted a quiet room for meditating. I do TM every day. You’re right near the jacuzzi. Might be a couple of truckers in there tonight.’
Thank you, Stuart. ‘My bag’s in the car.’
‘Park right in front of the office. Those are the basement stairs.’ She points at the stairwell.
I drag the red bag downstairs. At the end of the basement corridor, I see a whale-like flotilla. Two drunken, tattooed truckers romping in the bubbles.
‘Come on in, honey.’
‘This is great for all that ails you.’
‘Thanks guys, but I’ve got a date with a bed.’ Better get into the room pronto.
‘It’s only seven thirty. Don’t you wanna party? Come on, hon. It’s party time.’
Flashbacks to Tanya and Lothar. Hon! I don’t like that word.
I am now underground in my Pennysaver suite. There is a miniature casement window above my bed right below the beige ceiling. I climb up onto my bed, look out of my window … Oh. A bulldozer. Construction site. Good night. Where is the Valium?
‘Sweet dreams, dear.’
Bulldozing begins at seven thirty the next morning. Fortunately, I am on my way out the door. I enter the hallowed halls of education. The walls are cracked, floors strewn with school debris: bottles, cans, candy wrappers. Smells like a urinal. Beechwood High didn’t look like this. Great place. Great town. Almost perfect. Almost. I look for, but can’t find the principal’s office. Open a door, stumble into a pitch-black auditorium. It might as well be a morgue; not an ounce of life or art in this crypt.
Reach for a crumpled piece of paper in my pocket. Room sixty-nine. Laugh at the numbers, find the room, enter. I see teenagers seated
at desks too small for their bodies, teenagers with sad eyes that look up to me for some assurance that this hour will be worthwhile. Here is a room full of poor, deprived children, the children whose parents collect unemployment checks, welfare checks, disability checks. There are no checks and balances in the lives of these abandoned faces … These kids don’t have a prayer. All they can hope for is one day to get out of town.
‘Write about or write to someone who has influenced you.’ Vacant stares. ‘Someone who has been a pioneer, an influence, who has changed your life. Tell them what you want them to know about you. What do you want to say to them? What do you need to tell them?’ Give them time … more time. Christ. Most of them look so old. Weary. Without future.
‘Time’s up! Okay. Who wants to start?’
A beautiful black girl in the front row stands tall. She looks so alive, so grown up, like a whole grown person. Escape! Get out now. Leave this town before it kills your spirit.
‘Harriet Tubman.’
‘If you don’t mind, could you tell the rest of class who she is.’
‘She was a runaway slave who became a conductor on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. She helped other slaves get free.’
A voice from the back of the room. ‘She was the first real freedom fighter.’
‘Adolf Hitler!’ The blond male mall rat stands up. ‘I like Hitler. That dude is my hero because he almost got rid of all those dirty Jews. Harriet Tubman didn’t do anything compared to Adolf Hitler,’ says the blond mall rat. Peals of laughter in the schoolroom.
Don’t tell him that you are a Jewish, gay, liberal woman from the east coast. They are looking at me. They know everything about me. Where does all this hatred come from? Parents. Somewhere at home is a soul-sucking, right-wing fascist …
‘Honey. It’s okay. Believe me. Everything is just fine.’
No, it’s not! ‘Since the beginning of time,’ I say … That beautiful black girl in the front row, she understands forgiveness. That wee young boy in the third row, who looks like he wants to say something, I bet he loves his father and mother, they love him, even though they are destitute, and he’s on the school lunch program. I bet he understands forgiveness.
‘There’s no mill here no more. But we stay ’cause it’s home,’ says the wee boy.
What railroad are you gonna jump on to get away from here? Let me take you away from your suffering. Please. There is a place, a divine place. We can get there together … She sits front row center. Looks through me. I feel her inside me. Again.
Later that afternoon, I walk 4.8 miles through a snow-covered wheat field in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The field and I can’t wait for spring. I scream to the future and to the past. ‘Please forgive me, even if I can’t forgive myself.’
Later that evening, in my underground mole motel room, I pick up the cracked black telephone, dial forty-three digits so that I might have the privilege of getting an outside line. I place the receiver to my ear (not my neck) and await my sister Dina’s lovely voice on the other end of man’s vast web of telecommunication.
It is now eight fifteen p.m. in New York City. She will be readying herself for sleep. I have at least fifteen minutes before her curfew is in effect. Hopefully, we will have an adult, sisterly conversation.
Sound of phone dropping on floor. She picks it up. ‘Ouch. Hello.’
‘You all right?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Cedar Falls, Iowa.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Somewhere in the middle of the country.’
‘Why are you there?’
‘Why are you there?’
‘I live here.’
‘I know that. But, why are any of us anywhere?’
‘You sound depressed.’
‘What’s new?’
‘Ralph has shingles.’
‘Oh shit. How’s he doing?’
‘He read in some science book somewhere that if it develops near the eye, the cornea can be affected and blindness might occur.’
‘Is it near his eyes?’
‘No, it’s right under his ribs in the front down near his belly button.’
‘Then why’s he worried?’
‘It’s Ralph.’
‘Right. How’s business.’
‘He’s got shingles. That’s how’s business.’
‘I thought it’s from chicken pox?’
‘It is. But he’s nervous. Doesn’t help things.’
‘How are you?’
‘Let’s see. Sara, your niece, is sleeping with a forty-two-year-old pre-med student recently returned from germ-filled darkest Africa after serving in the Peace Corps. He will be fifty when he becomes a resident. And boy does he have big plans. He hopes to specialize in environmental pediatric medicine back in his hometown of Topeka, Kansas. By the time he hits sixty, if he’s still standing and she’s off Prozac, they want to adopt a couple of wonderful Bosnian children.’
‘At last, a doctor in the family.’
‘He’s too old to be a doctor. And, at the age of twenty-seven, she, your niece, has decided to go back to school and finally get her diploma … in photojournalism … which she’s never studied. You are so fortunate that you never had children. I wish I were gay.’
Simone must have given her that idea. Got to call her. When does she leave for Zurich? ‘How’s my nephew?’
‘Charlie, your nephew, has recently informed his father and his mother that he has all intentions of moving to Shanghai. American food no longer agrees with his newly acquired Asian palate and his yen for Asian studies.’ I try to get a word in edgewise. ‘He has also informed his parents that Asian women have more body and luster to their hair. American hair is not turning him on anymore. But Asian hair turns him on a great deal. I’m so glad he spent a year abroad.’
‘Prell.’
‘Prell? The shampoo?’ She yawns. ‘Didn’t I use Prell? I have terrible hair. You have the great hair. You got our mother’s hair and nails.’
‘That’s not all I got. I’m quitting.’
‘No, you’re not. You love those little cherubs in Indiana.’
‘Iowa! I had a Nazi in my eleventh-grade class today.’
‘How do you know he was a Nazi?’
‘He stood up and told the class that Hitler was his hero.’
‘He didn’t know what he was talking about. He lives in Iowa.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m trying to cheer you up. When everything feels like it’s falling apart, someone has to …’
I hear my mother’s voice. ‘Sat on a wall
Had a great fall
cannot put … cannot put …
together … again
together … again.’
‘I am depressed.’
Dina pauses: ‘Look, my friend Ruby, the part-time pilates teacher in my office, gave me the name of a therapist. Her name is Mary Michelin.’
‘Like the tire?’
‘What tire?’
‘The one on your Mercedes.’
‘Oh. (She laughs). Like the tire. She’s your kind of therapist – a present-lives regressionist.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Past lives maybe. Present lives is not possible.’
‘Mary Michelin believes that the present life is the only life, and in it are all of our past lives. She takes her patients back to their childhood by downloading or offloading or devolving back with some Jungian Kabbalistic techniques. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?’ I yawn. ‘She works with a lot of artists. You should see her when you get back from … where are you again?’
‘Iowa. But I’m going to Nebraska next.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes. I like to know where you are.’
‘You wouldn’t believe where I am.’
‘You’re in Iowa. I was listening.’
‘Good night.�
��
‘Good night.’
‘Send my love to the kids. Tell Ralph not to worry about going blind. I read in my nutritional healing book that a secondary infection brought on by shingles can cause death if the bacteria isn’t treated. Let him worry about that.’
‘I can’t tell him that. He’ll believe it.’
‘It’s true.’
‘I better go make sure that he’s all right. Give me your number. I’ll call you from the office.’
‘You can’t reach me. There’s no switchboard.’
‘Where have they got you this time?’
‘The Pennysaver Motel.’ We howl as we hang up. I do love my sister.
‘Your sister loves you almost as much as you know who. Go to sleep, my angel.’
Road Kill
’84
‘Look, Dr Dot … it’s very hard for me to be here with you. No, don’t speak. Please don’t say anything until I’m through talking. I guess Dr Guttman told you a little about me. I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m afraid to tell you everything. I don’t know if I should tell you about the demons? They’re everywhere. I can’t fight them. I abandoned the work. The group isn’t protecting me anymore. You probably think I’m crazy? I can’t stand it, I’m always hungry. I have a pit, this pit right here in my stomach. Can’t fill it up. I need to eat, but when I eat, I feel like I’m going to throw up. I hear voices. Since she died, I hear voices. They’re louder now. How do I know you’re not a demon? No, don’t say anything. I’m not ready to hear your voice. One more voice will put me over the edge. I left my mother … my mother’s house last year. My sister left too. My father went to work. Bastard. My mother drank a bottle of Drano. Ate up her stomach. How could I leave? She told me that she didn’t want to be a burden anymore. Didn’t want to spend my father’s money. Never saw her again. My father sees ghosts in the bedroom, where they used to sleep. Ghosts everywhere … I hope he dies soon. I’m not protected anymore. Christ, I’m shaking. No, don’t come any closer. I’ll just sit here and shake. I like to rock back and forth.’
‘Rock-a-bye, baby’