He might have tightened his yellow gloves so he could feel the fabric brace across his knuckles. He pulls out the cloth laced with sodium pentothal and steps behind her.
Will she see me?
No, he thinks, her vanity is too great.
CHAPTER 8
Dorothy decided to make a nice dinner, something she routinely did after she and Jim resolved an issue. It officially meant a problem was over, which also meant there was nothing more to discuss.
She decided to make one of Crawford’s old favorites: chicken zucchini lasagna. He complained that the dish was responsible for helping his middle-aged gut protrude over his beltline, but Dorothy rationalized it was a healthier indulgence than single-malt Scotch.
Crawford decided it would look normal to lie on the couch in the den and prepare for the Hershey show by looking over some of his notes, which were essentially a rundown of Self-Esteem’s major points along with some mildly entertaining remarks and observations he could use as time wasters.
“Honey, Cal’s home,” Dorothy yelled from the kitchen.
So what, he thought. What am I going to do? Run to the door and throw my arms around the little prick? Little bastard drives a fifty-thousand dollar car.
The thought of the car was becoming more and more annoying. Crawford tried to concentrate on his notes but the “entertainment news” on TV was stealing his attention. There was an up and coming young actor who had just been arrested for beating up his girlfriend in a New Orleans hotel room. Crawford had never seen the guy, who was apparently a big hit on primetime. Crawford looked at the kid’s dark, angry eyes. It looked like Bourbon Street or somewhere else in the French Quarter, a place where Crawford had gotten smashed several more times than he could remember.
Crawford looked at his notes.
I guess I’m just going to wing it, he thought.
Then he heard Dorothy raise her voice from the kitchen, as if she’d been trying to muster the courage to do so for a long time. “So where did you go this afternoon?”
Crawford shook his head thinking, I knew she’d ask me that. But before he could open his mouth, he heard Cal answer the question.
“I just took Darrin home. Damn. What’s the big deal?”
“Have you been crying?” Crawford heard his wife say.
Crawford got up, walked to the kitchen and stood near the doorway.
Dorothy had her hands on her hips as if to show authority. “You could have said something. I made dinner. Why are your eyes so red? Have you been crying or something? Is something wrong?”
Crawford poked his head around the corner and saw Cal with his back to him. He didn’t need to see Cal’s red eyes to know that he hadn’t been crying.
“I’m just tired. What’s the big deal?”
“You could be a little more polite, Son,” Crawford said. Crawford figured if he wasn’t going to make an issue out of Cal being high, his son could at least show him some face.
“Oh, really? Father,” Cal said.
“Your mother is worried about you.”
“You’re not worried, though. Are you?”
Crawford looked at Cal’s glazed eyes and wondered if he hadn’t been blase about Cal’s drug use. “I’m a little worried about you too,” he said.
“About me? Maybe you should worry about yourself.”
“Cal,” Dorothy started. “Don’t talk to your father…”
“What father?” Cal said, storming out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Dorothy looked as if she was going to stop him then Crawford shook his head.
“Let him go.”
“I just don’t know what to do,” she said, throwing her oven mitt on the counter.
“Don’t do anything. He’s a teenager. There’s nothing you can do.”
“Nothing, huh?” Dorothy said before sinking into a long silence.
She burned the chicken zucchini lasagna.
Crawford just wandered back into the den and sat on the couch. On TV the “entertainment news” show had ended. The local news, which in the last decade had pretty much become entertainment news with a little weather, had begun. The title card behind the newscaster read, “Famous Psychologist Missing.” Crawford knew they were talking about Dr. Thomas Watkins, a somewhat well-known psychologist, but one few people recognized from TV.
Crawford stared at the screen wondering what his tongue looked like.
Jenny couldn’t remember where she was or how she got there. She just knew this couldn’t be real. She started to struggle. She started to breathe heavily. She realized her hands must be tied or she wouldn’t be struggling, but she couldn’t feel her hands. She couldn’t feel her arms. She wondered if she still had them. But I’m moving, so I must have them. She moved again. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. She tried to open her mouth but something was covering it. There was a blinding light, then a beeping sound, like a recorder of some kind. There were footsteps — slow, lumbering footsteps. Surely I am dreaming, she thought. Then she saw the reflection of a large knife in front of her face. Then she heard a voice — an expressionless, unfamiliar voice.
“Stage two.”
She could feel his breath, not her own, streaming from her nostrils.
“Eliminate the harmful things that are destroying your life.”
Then it was the blade again.
“You know all about Dr. Crawford’s program,” he is saying.
Jenny thought that surely she was dreaming. No, she knew she was dreaming. That’s right. And that was the end of that. And since she knew she was dreaming it was what they call a “lucid dream.” That’s right. And in lucid dreaming you can create any circumstance you want. She had tried to get Jim to read some material on the subject to see if perhaps he could insert lucid dream manipulation into the Self Series, but he acted like an asshole and didn’t want to hear it. Okay, maybe I can talk him into it now. Okay, I don’t need to talk him into that. Trip to Acapulco. Trip to Acapulco.
It’s a TV show. There’s that Happy Pappy character. It’s a biography program. Is this about Jim? That’s not what I want.
Maybe it was Jim who was dreaming. He had an imagination like that.
Happy Pappy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Pappy of Blissville Road. Happy’s mother, Joy Pappy, breastfeeds little Happy with her pink popsicle nipples that Happy delightedly sucks for their fruity nectar. Happy’s father, Glee Pappy, watches with pride, staring at the little camper’s distinctive nose and cheeks. “He will be Happy when he grows up,” he says, “and he will let nothing get him down. And I mean nothing.”
Happy starts to walk, petting the fuzzy flora and fauna that litter their serene backdrop. “Do you feel good?” he often asks the natural beauty around him. “Yes we do!” the flowers and trees gaily reply. Everything seems perfect.
But there are problems: Old Man Glee starts to drink too much root beer at night, which makes him blissful at first but later a bit cranky. And Joy, as a result of taking care of her young son, is sometimes too tired at night to humpty hump with Glee, which Glee blames on little Happy. Joy also says she hates the smell of root beer on a man and Glee sometimes gives her a mean spanking for saying bad things to him. Soon there are more than just a couple of problems. Young Happy grows into adolescence hating Glee and starts to dream of killing him and running away with Joy to another backdrop. Glee becomes aware of Happy’s resentment and starts to give him nasty slaps while high on root beer.
Since there are no other creatures around besides the Pappies and the furry animals that dance and play, Happy starts to fall in love with his mother Joy. His weenie gets hard at night thinking about her big lollipop boobies so he…
“Christ! I said Acapulco! Acapulco!”
Then the breath of a whisper on her neck: “You aren’t dreaming, little lover.”
As Dorothy puttered around in the bathroom, Crawford sat in bed looking at the ceiling, his right wrist resting on his forehead, his eyes sagging with fatigue but unable to close. The thirst was killing hi
m, but it’s killing millions of others as well. I’m not alone. This thought didn’t make things any easier for Crawford. He felt no universal link to the millions who shared his disease. As a matter of fact, he despised them.
“Distract yourself into positive thoughts.”
That’s in Self-Confidence, he thought. What bullshit. But wait. I came up with that when I was inebriated. Is that right? That’s right. I came up with the idea long before I wrote it. And yes, I was piss drunk.
Crawford had come up with almost all his good ideas for the Self Series while he was smashed. He drank to rebel. But then he needed to rebel against the rebellion of drinking. And he decided at some point that there was no greater rebellion against drinking than self-help.
Crawford had been in the habit of rebelling against anything he could think of since he was in his mid-teens. Later, he rebelled against himself rebelling.
To Crawford college was about whether you were attracted to the light or to the dark. And at some time or another, Crawford had come to the decision that the dark was more meaningful than the light. The dark was interesting, engaging. The light was easy, ordinary, predictable, obvious — like a 60-watt bulb. Damn it, depressing things were in and what wasn’t wasn’t, and that’s all there was to it.
But after he married, after his child was born, after “the dark” hadn’t paid off like he thought it would, Crawford had a revelation. He would rebel against the dark. He would take that frown and turn it upside down. He would turn his back on the gloomy doomy poseurs and think about the wise words of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin and Gandhi and Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Keller and Dale Carnegie.
Yes, Carnegie. Dorothy had given Crawford a copy of Carnegie’s classic How to Stop Worrying and Start Living after Crawford had identified worry as the prime reason for his heavy drinking. “It’s all about worry, honey.”
“Read this,” she said, throwing the book in his lap as he lay on the living room couch, recovering from a bender. “You won’t need to drink ever again.”
It was that simple.
Yeah, right. Crawford was skeptical of the book for many reasons. He especially liked to make jokes that it was published just prior to Carnegie’s death.
Crawford was soon struck, though, by Carnegie’s maxim, “Cooperate with the inevitable.” That was pure genius. If you looked at it in a certain way, it could be as depressing as they come, but it wasn’t.
“Cooperate with the inevitable.” He said it often to himself as he fought to stay sober. It was inevitable he would stop drinking. In life or in death, he would eventually stop. And with that in mind, Crawford drank less. And soon, Crawford was working on himself like he did as a boy back in the days of his paper route. He put aside Carnegie and started making notes: little lessons to himself on how to live. It worked. It helped him improve. Things changed. He started to write thoughts in notebooks and record them on tape. The ideas he was especially proud of were neatly typed using his old electric typewriter. And they all seemed to flow from one idea: let things happen that are going to happen and move on. It gave Crawford a strong sense of relief to think this way. It gave him… Self-Confidence.
Crawford at some point realized that these notes, these typed and scribbled pages, made up the largest body of non-academic writing he had done in his entire life. As Dorothy began to organize them into a manuscript, Crawford realized that the size of the work rivaled that of his doctoral dissertation, which was short by the university’s standards.
The strangest thing was that the act of writing had improved Crawford’s confidence. Perhaps he could write that novel someday. Perhaps he could have that confidence (the self-confidence, rather). Self-Confidence was finally published to mixed reviews and fantastic sales. And the light had won for a while.
Eventually, however, Carnegie’s “Cooperate with the inevitable” didn’t offer the same comfort it once did. Then it didn’t offer any comfort at all. Perhaps it even made Crawford’s worries multiply. What was “the inevitable” after all? And how would you cooperate with it?
Okay, Cal is going to experiment with marijuana. That’s inevitable. Cooperate with it. Okay, but what if he moves on to harder drugs? Ecstasy, then speed, then cocaine, then crack, then heroin.
Naw, that’s not going to happen. That’s not the inevitable.
Or is it?
Crawford had thought Dorothy was right, that he hadn’t been thinking of his son enough. But what could he do? Every time he thought about Cal it started a conversation in his head that disturbed him. And such a disorder was what made him want to drink. And drinking didn’t help the promotional appearance on the Hershey show, writing the novel, working things out with Lee, trying to be happy, and stopping the nuts of the world that think they are Happy Pappy.
And the more Crawford thought about Cal — especially his ability to avoid discipline — the more helpless he felt. Suddenly Cal’s last words were eating at Crawford’s fragile pride: Maybe you should worry about yourself.
Crawford mimed the words in baby talk. The little prick.
Dorothy came out of the bathroom combing her hair. She was wearing that nightgown he loved so much. Crawford started to think how beautiful she looked, but the thought went away.
“Don’t worry about him, Dorothy. He’ll be just fine. Just let him get through adolescence. That’s all. We all went through it.”
“He’s my son. I’ll always worry about him.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, and Crawford rolled on his side away from her.
“Worry is just a part of life, okay?” he said.
Silently and blankly, Dorothy mimed Crawford’s words.
Part II:
The Harmful Things
CHAPTER 9
CRAWFORD’S EYES SEEMED TO FORCE THEMSELVES OPEN. He thought he heard a noise but now there was piercing silence. He had fallen asleep without knowing it and now he was awake and alert and oddly so. His sleeping patterns were always a befuddled mess while he was “on one,” and this moment was what he theoretically thought of as the Strange Alertness After Initial Sobriety While Sleeping Past Liquor Store Hours Syndrome.
It was impossible to know whether he had heard a noise or not, but he could have sworn he did. Yes, it was a car. A car squealing away.
So what? he thought.
The digital clock next to his bed read 3:40am. Thank God, the liquor stores are closed. I made it. I made it without drinking.
Oh God, he thought, the liquor stores are closed.
Crawford carefully got out of bed and went to the window, pulling the curtain slightly aside to take a peak outside and spy the source of that strange noise. The street looked normal and peaceful like it always did.
Just a noise. That’s all.
Crawford was just about to close the curtains when he noticed something at the front door — just a corner of something that wasn’t blocked by the awning. It looked like it could be another package, just like the first one, sitting in the same place on the front steps.
A package? Another package? Again?
His first inclination was to wake Dorothy, but no, bad idea. I’ll take care of this myself.
He put on his robe and slippers and quietly stepped into the hallway outside the master bedroom, looking over his shoulder to watch his wife sleep.
“I can’t even handle a practical joke, baby,” he whispered. “You deserve so much better.”
He closed the door slowly then looked down the hall, standing up straight, extending his chest.
I can do better. Yes, I can.
Crawford walked down the dark steps in time with the ticking of the grandfather clock, which sounded curiously loud. He pressed his ear against the door then looked through the peephole.
How ridiculous this is, he thought. You cowardly piece of shit.
Crawford opened the door, and the wind felt curiously warm, like the hot breath of a dog but dry as a bone. He stepped onto his front porch and stood in front of
two packages at his feet. Both were wrapped like gifts — one the size of a videotape, the other bigger and flatter.
Crawford looked beyond his dark front yard to the silent neighborhood around him to see if he noticed anything unusual — a car, a light, something. But there was nothing. Same old neighborhood, safe and sound. Apparently they had come and gone. They? He? Her? There was no way of knowing. If this is Berry, he’s more ambitious than I thought.
Crawford took the two packages down to his fortress of solitude and sat at his desk, placing them in front of him. He sat back in his chair, hesitant to do anything. He knew the smaller package was probably a videotape. But the other? There was a small envelope on top of the smaller package, and he picked it up and opened it.
“To Dr. Crawford from Happy Pappy. Your program works!” Crawford read aloud.
Fucking clowns. And Dorothy will never believe it. Never.
Just like college days.
There were never any whoopee cushions. There were never any saltshakers with the lids unscrewed, never any super glue in door locks or laxatives in drinks. No itching powder or stink bombs. Nothing that could be defined or recognized as a practical joke. Which alone could drive the average person completely nuts. But that wasn’t the worst of it. This subtle approach to harassment had a far subtler cousin: the absence of a finale.
One pestering thing after another never had a prank’s logical resolution, never the coda, never the laughs of having embarrassed or humiliated, never the adolescent gloat of having caused frustration or inconvenience, never any explanation of payback, retribution, or revenge, never any indication of whether that revenge was served hot or cold (if, in fact, it was revenge) or even if it existed at all. There was never even a denial, which was not surprising in the absence of an accusation. And there was never an accusation because there was never any solid grounds for one. What Crawford believed his classmates Albert Scott and Jay Berry were doing to him was so brilliant in its variation and irregularity that he could never bring himself to confront them about it. Crawford was certain they were put on earth to drain him of his energy, make his life more difficult, and cause him endless aggravation. But he could never prove it. He could never catch them. He could never make a distinction between their silent assault and the tribulations of everyday life. Truth was, he could not know for sure.
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