KooKooLand

by Gloria Norris

I waited until he left, and then burst out crying.

  I cried until I finally told myself to quit my blubbering.

  I found myself a headshrinker.

  Unlike the one at Bennington, I told her the truth about Jimmy.

  “I’d be mad as hell too if he was my father,” she said.

  After that I was still mad, but at least I didn’t throw any more pizzas.

  And I prayed I never would again.

  God, if you exist—OK, you probably don’t, but so what?—please don’t let me be like Jimmy.

  I was finally ready for that Jimmy lobotomy. It was a delicate operation and I hoped the patient wouldn’t croak on the operating table.

  Unfortunately, I was the only one with the experience and training to do it.

  I was a goddamn doctor after all.

  I put on my scrubs and got to work.

  I tried to carve Jimmy out of my noggin—I mean, brain.

  But of course there were complications.

  One night, Shirley called me out of the blue.

  I knew something was up.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying not to imagine every bad scenario.

  She said she had fallen down and broken her wrist. For real. No scam.

  She sounded shaken up, but was trying to put a good face on it.

  “How did it happen?” I pressed her, having my suspicions.

  “Oh, you know I’m so clumsy. Your father always said I could trip over a leaf.”

  Maybe she was stoned. Or maybe Jimmy had pushed her.

  I just couldn’t pin her down.

  Fortunately, there were a lot of Percocets around to ease her pain. Jimmy told her not to gobble down so many, she was depleting his goddamn inventory.

  A couple of weeks later, when I called to check up on her, she had hurt the other wrist.

  “Just a little sprain. I’m so clumsy.”

  “You know her, she could trip over a goddamn leaf,” grumbled Jimmy on the other line.

  I started to think seriously about kidnapping my mother.

  I tried to get her on the phone to discuss a plan. But it wasn’t easy. More and more, Jimmy wouldn’t let her out of his sight. If he went to the racetrack, she went along. To the Greek market, she was riding shotgun. Rat shooting, same deal. He drove her to work and picked her up. She was still working the night shift even while drug dealing. She said it was the only time she felt a little free.

  When I finally managed to get her alone on the phone, she wouldn’t consider leaving.

  “What am I going to do, move in with you? You’ve got your own life, and besides, I’d never find my way around New York. I can’t even drive ’cause I got no sense of direction.”

  “You can’t drive ’cause he never let you!”

  “If I went down there, you know he’d come after me. He’d be fit to be tied and who knows what he’d do to both of us. I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

  “If he showed up, I’d call the cops. The New York cops won’t let him off the hook. They don’t care if he’s the best duck hunter in New England.”

  “If you call the cops, they’ll go nosing around and find out what we’ve been doing. You want to put your own mother in jail?”

  “I’m trying to save you!”

  “Save me? I don’t need to be saved. Your father’s not the monster you make him out to be. He’s not like Hank.”

  “He’s just like Hank.”

  “Look, I know what I’m doing. I’ve got it figured out. He thinks he’s the one keeping me in line, but I’ve got his number. If I just keep my mouth shut and do what he says, I can keep him in line.”

  That was it. She could control him by being controlled.

  It wasn’t much of a life, but it was better than ending up like Doris. Better than making your daughter a motherless child like Susan.

  We were both out of options.

  So she stayed. And I left her there.

  I kept working for Woody and writing screenplays about violent men. Woody’s producer read one of the scripts and offered to fly me out to Los Angeles—first class—to develop it.

  It was good timing.

  It was time to get away. Long past time.

  So I picked up and moved to California.

  “You belong in KooKooLand for leaving that cushy job with Woody Allen,” Jimmy said, when I called to tell him the news. “That place is for numbskulls. It’s for sissies who can’t take the winter and who don’t know how to shoot a goddamn gun. Just don’t expect me to come out there to visit you.”

  “OK,” I said, resisting the urge to shout yabba dabba doo. “But why don’t you let Mom come out for a visit?”

  “Are you nuts? She won’t like it either.”

  “Those palm trees look pretty nice,” Shirley said timidly. “I’d sure like to see one before I kick the bucket.”

  “We got plenty of goddamn trees around here. Better goddamn trees than those spindly-looking things that don’t even give you any shade after you been mowin’ a lawn for some rich Jew movie producer who’s been bakin’ himself like a nigger by his frickin’ swimming pool. I’ll tell you one thing. I hope that place has an earthquake and falls into the goddamn sea.”

  Never mind that I—his own daughter—would be drowning too.

  Susan Being Susan

  California didn’t fall into the sea and neither did I.

  All that sunshine really perked me up.

  Being farther away from New Hampshire perked me up.

  Writing about a murderer perked me up.

  But sometimes it also made me think about Susan.

  Just as Susan had been shadowed by Doris in that California sunshine, I was shadowed by Susan.

  I thought about how many times I had fantasized about us hanging out on the beach together, free from the shadow of our fathers.

  Once I saw a woman who looked like her and stopped in my tracks.

  But it wasn’t her.

  I realized there was a good chance I might not even recognize Susan if she did walk by me.

  I still tried to keep tabs on her through Jimmy and Shirley, but the news was never good.

  She just couldn’t stay out of trouble. I heard about her swindling people and forging prescriptions right and left. She was arrested more than twenty times. Some judges seemed to have sympathy for her and tried to cut her a break. But she’d end up right back in their courtroom. Finally, she was sentenced to a few years in prison.

  And that’s when she did something amazing.

  Because New Hampshire was the only state in the country that couldn’t be bothered to build a prison for women, Susan was forced to do her time in a county jail. Conditions at the jail were terrible. For five months of the year, when the weather was lousy, the women prisoners weren’t even allowed outside to get a breath of fresh air. They were given yarn by their jailers and told to knit hats and mittens for the inmates at the men’s prison so they could be more comfortable outdoors. All the perks offered to male inmates—rehab programs, a law library, prison jobs—were denied to the women. Worst of all, if a vacancy in a women’s prison in another state opened up, a woman could be shipped there on a moment’s notice, miles from her family and children.

  Susan’s bleeding heart bled for those women ripped from their children. It bled for the children, unfairly robbed of their mothers. She knew what that felt like. Every bone in her body told her the whole thing was wrong and that she had to do something about it.

  But Susan being Susan, she didn’t just write her congressman or send a letter to the local paper. She was Hank Piasecny’s daughter and she aimed for the biggest target. She decided to sue the state. To force them to build a prison for women.

  She convinced a legal aid group to take on the case. She enlisted a half dozen other women inmates to join her cause.

  The class action lawsuit dragged on. Susan got paroled but didn’t give up the fight. While she waited for her day in court, she stayed clean, worked menial jobs,
and studied the law as intensely as she had once studied medicine. The legal battle brought out the parts of her that had always inspired me: her intelligence, her fearlessness, her compassion.

  When the case finally came to trial, in November 1986, it had gotten even stronger. An additional seventeen female inmates added their names to it. Susan testified about what life had been like for her in the place she referred to as “the tomb.”

  The trial before a judge lasted eight days. When it was over, Susan’s side scored a knockout. The judge, in an impassioned decision, agreed that the women prisoners were being treated like second-class citizens. He ordered the state to provide a temporary prison for them within a few months and to build a permanent one within two years.

  Once again, Susan was in the news, but this time for a good reason.

  Even Jimmy grudgingly had to give her credit for sticking it to the screws—and for outshining me.

  “Ha ha. She’s nosing you out in the backstretch,” he said.

  I was happy to let Susan have the limelight. I felt vindicated for all the years I’d kept rooting for her, long past when most people, Jimmy especially, had given up on her.

  So much had been taken from Susan, but she’d still succeeded in her goal to give something back. And, no matter what happened to her from that point on, no matter where her life went from there, nobody could ever say she hadn’t done something exceptional with it.

  A Goner

  After such a high point, there was probably nowhere for Susan to go but down.

  Her demons came back to haunt her. Drug addiction, writing bad checks, stealing. At least when she got re-incarcerated, there was a better place for her to go.

  Over the years, I continued to think about her, but it was impossible to keep track of her as she disappeared for stretches of time doing drugs and changing addresses. Occasionally, I sent letters that were never answered, until I finally stopped sending them.

  I thought, once and for all, it was time to turn the page on a story that seemed destined to have a sad ending.

  I didn’t want to keep living in the past. Despite all of Jimmy’s efforts to derail me, I had managed to make a great life for myself. I earned my living writing and producing small movies. I wasn’t rich or a big shot, as Jimmy still loved to remind me, but I was doing what I loved.

  I had also finally met the man I was going to marry. He was a writer, like me. His name was James. He didn’t like being called Jimmy. That was fine by me. He was nothing like my father. He was gentle. Law-abiding. He’d never fired a gun. And he was Jewish. A rabbi was going to marry us.

  Jimmy didn’t come to the wedding—but not because of the rabbi. By then, he had gotten used to most of my boyfriends being Jewish. True, he still sometimes threatened to kidnap me and take me to Greece to marry me off to a guy like Papou. But I didn’t think he was really serious about that. A trip to Greece would cost a bundle and he hadn’t spent a red cent on me since I’d left home.

  Still, he was willing to spring for a plane ticket to KooKooLand for my wedding.

  “It’ll be a day you’ll never forget,” he said, with a sly glee in his voice.

  I hung up and got a familiar knot in my gut.

  I pictured how things would go.

  First, of course, he would get loaded.

  Then, he would tell everyone I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. He couldn’t call me Dracula anymore since I’d gone and gotten braces a few years back and ruined all his fun.

  He would call my husband four-eyes and announce all Jews were blind as a bat.

  He would tell some woman she looked like Ava Gardner and try to grab her ass.

  He would ask the rabbi if he liked pork chops. Hey, it was a joke. It wasn’t his fault the guy had no goddamn sense of humor.

  Imagining that whole scenario didn’t make me feel like laughing. It made me feel like canceling my wedding and eloping.

  Who needs a fancy shindig? I asked myself. Who needs to blow all that dough, anyway?

  Suddenly, I froze. That’s what he wants, I realized. He wants me to cancel it.

  He was still putting ideas in my head.

  Still putting words in my mouth like a ventriloquist.

  But I was nobody’s dummy anymore.

  Nobody’s goddamn dummkopf.

  I didn’t cancel my wedding.

  I canceled Jimmy instead.

  “I think it would be better if you don’t come,” I told him a few days later.

  There was a seething silence on the other end of the phone.

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead at that shindig anyway,” he finally barked, and hung up.

  “How can you treat your father that way?” wailed Shirley, who had been listening in on the other line.

  “I don’t want to be miserable at my own wedding. Anyway, you heard him. He doesn’t want to come.”

  “He’s just saying that to save face. You insulted him. I think you just don’t want your big-shot friends to meet your family.”

  “I want everyone to meet you. And Virginia too.”

  “Does your sister know you’re doing this, not inviting your father?”

  “I told her. She said she’s still coming.”

  “Well, I can’t say the same for myself,” Shirley said, and hung up.

  “My mother’s probably not coming to the wedding,” I wailed to my husband-to-be.

  “I bet it’ll work out. I bet she’ll come around,” said James, since, being the opposite of Jimmy, he was an optimist.

  “But who will walk you down the aisle?” asked one of my girlfriends, when I told her about disinviting Jimmy.

  “Me,” I said. “I wouldn’t put it past Jimmy to trip me on my way down the aisle.”

  “Oh, he can’t be that bad,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh yes, he is. He really is.”

  I didn’t regret my decision, even though Jimmy had stopped talking to me. That was kind of a blessing, actually.

  And James was right. Shirley did end up coming.

  Maybe one of us should go, she told Jimmy. We don’t want the neighbors talking. We want to keep our problems on a stone wall, don’t we?

  She had his number. He grudgingly agreed to let her go.

  Shirley lost a lot of weight to fit into a sexy black dress that she hid from Jimmy.

  Virginia dyed her hair a fiery red, and painted her nails to match.

  When they showed up, I thought they both looked great.

  The night before the wedding, Jimmy sucker punched me.

  He called and wished me a beautiful day. I wasn’t sure if he really meant it, or if he was just trying to rock my boat. Trying to make me feel guilty.

  But I didn’t feel guilty. I shed a few tears and thanked him for calling.

  Then I hung up and forgot all about him.

  The next day, I had the best day of my life.

  Shirley and Virginia had the time of their lives too.

  They were both crazy about KooKooLand.

  “I’d move out here if I was younger and had the guts to leave your father,” Shirley sighed.

  “I’d move if I didn’t have a job, a husband, and a kid,” said Virginia.

  They both vowed to come back again soon.

  I made Shirley a photo album of the wedding so she’d have a reminder of a good time in her life. Something to keep her going whenever things got rough with Jimmy.

  And in the months after the wedding, things got really rough.

  I didn’t know how rough at the time. Shirley hid it. I found out later. More than I wanted to know.

  Jimmy was going off the rails.

  He was drinking even more than usual. Drinking morning, noon, and night. He was gambling more too. He blew all their drug dough on the horses. He berated Shirley nonstop. Once, he caught her watching a Red Sox game and went ballistic. He said she was drooling over those lard-ass players like an old whore.

  He was determined to make Shirley pay for her good time in Califor
nia. Every time he saw her looking at that photo album, he told her she was lording it over him. He felt like that goddamn photo album was proof of something he had suspected since the moment I was born: that she loved me more than him.

  His jealousy festered like a boil. He became consumed with rage. Day after day he told Shirley she was stupid and worthless and ugly.

  Finally, one August afternoon everything came to a head.

  Jimmy had been boozing it up since breakfast. He cornered Shirley by the stove as she was making dinner. He told her flat out he wanted her dead. She saw the look in his eyes and grabbed for the closest weapon to defend herself—a hammer from the kitchen drawer. He wrenched the hammer away from her and began to smash the wall beside her head with it, threatening to smash her head in. She broke away from him and ran toward the bedroom. He threw the hammer at her. It landed on the floor in front of her and broke apart. A piece of it ricocheted into her ankle. She hobbled into the bedroom and locked herself in. He kicked the door down—he was still strong as an ox. He pushed her down on the bed, kneeled on top of her, and put his hands on her throat.

  Shirley flailed underneath him, gasping for breath. His loveless eyes were deep, black pools trying to drown her.

  She felt certain she was a goner.

  But three things ended up saving her.

  The mattress was old and saggy and didn’t provide a stable surface for a sixty-eight-year-old drunk man.

  All the booze that he had been consuming for most of the day finally kicked in.

  And Shirley loved life—even if she was stuck sharing it with a murderous drunk—and wasn’t ready for it to end.

  She fought off her attacker, her husband of forty-five years.

  She tattooed him with her fists like a boxer, until Jimmy lost his balance on that saggy mattress and fell over. She scrambled away from him and ran out of the room.

  She did something she’d never done before. She called the cops down off that stone wall.

  The cops came and arrested Jimmy, but not before he told them to go fuck themselves a whole bunch of times.

  When the cops questioned Shirley, she told them the truth: It wasn’t the first time Jimmy had attacked her.

  Jimmy was put in jail for the night and then granted bail the next day. The bail conditions stipulated he couldn’t go near Shirley, drink, or possess a firearm.