by Elise Sax
The bus was very fancy. It had lavender mood lighting, and each chair had its own reclining position and television screen. It was like ultra-first-class in a fancy foreign airline. My mother wasn’t lying about her booth. She showed me how it would protect her from smoke.
“And even if I wasn’t in the booth, the bus has got this amazing Space X air filtration system.”
I sat down in one of the chairs and reclined back. We got quiet, and I wondered if she wanted to ask me for something and that’s why she had shown up. We didn’t exactly have the greatest relationship, but I knew that whatever she asked me for, I was going to do. I didn’t know why. She didn’t deserve my help. She had been a terrible mother ever since my father had died. We had a miserable relationship. But I knew I would say yes, just like I always did. Perhaps it was my hope of having some kind of normal mother-daughter relationship that always made me help her in the end. But my mother had a perfect record of letting me down, and even though she had a plum job and she looked healthy for once, I figured there was a ninety-five percent chance that she would let me down now, and that helping her would just make me regret it.
“You didn’t show up because all of a sudden I own a fancy house, did you? Because I’m not giving you any money. I don’t have any. And I’m not giving you Spencer’s money. And I’m not letting you live in our new fancy house, because it’s Spencer’s. He worked very hard on it, and he wants to live there with me and nobody else.” Not even with a sex robot, I was hoping. “I’m not going to make him live with you, too.”
There, I said it. It was sort of mean, but it turned out that it was easier to draw boundaries when it was for Spencer. Just like that, I had changed my life. I had put Spencer ahead of myself. I guessed that’s what commitment and marriage were about. And I hadn’t even said the vows yet. Something in me, something in my heart, had opened up and welcomed Spencer in, and I knew right then and there that it was forever.
“Don’t worry, Gladie. I’m going to show you that I’ve changed. I got an apartment on Main Street, right above a shop, owned by a man dressed a lot like you. He’s a little off-the-wall, but the rent is cheap. Zelda gave me some old furniture, and I set it up nice. It’s a sweet little place. One bedroom and all mine. You can come visit anytime you want. I’ll give you your own key, if you want.”
“Wow, Mom. That’s amazing.” I didn’t know how long this new mother with the job and apartment would last, but I never thought she would get this far, so I just enjoyed the moment.
“I’m getting married on Sunday,” I told her. “You’re welcome to attend if you want.”
A tear slid down my mother’s cheek. “Zelda already invited me. Thank you, Gladie. I can’t wait to see you married. Your father would’ve been so happy.”
My phone rang and I answered it, thankful for the interruption of our intimate moment, which was making me squirm in my seat. It was an unknown caller, and normally I wouldn’t answer, but I wanted the distraction.
“Is this Gladie Burger?” a young man asked.
“Yes, but I don’t do surveys, and I don’t need new windows.”
“Huh? What? No, this isn’t a sales call. A friend of yours told me to call you. Do you know a woman named Matilda?”
“Yes.” A cold chill went down my spine.
“Well she gave me a message for you. You want to hear it? She wrote it down on a napkin and smuggled it to me with twenty bucks.”
“Smuggled?”
“Here’s what she wrote: ‘Gladie, help.’ She added three exclamation marks. You want me to yell it?”
“No, I get the picture.”
“There’s more: ‘Help me, please. I’m in an insane asylum. They’re torturing me. I can’t get in touch with Rockwell. Nobody to help. Get me out of here. I’m begging you.’ That’s all she said. There’s some stuff here at the bottom, but it got kinda smeared in my pocket. Are we good here?”
“No, is this some kind of joke?”
“I don’t think so. She was in pretty bad shape. They were sending her to room C. People come out of room C pretty messed up.”
“And who are you?”
“Rather not say. I got a good job.”
“At least tell me where she is.”
He gave me the address, and I jotted it down on a Senior Leaf pad of paper that my mother gave me. I hung up the phone and immediately called Lucy.
“Lucy, can you go with me somewhere?”
“Did you find a dead body?”
“No, she’s not dead yet.”
“Oh, that’s weird, because you had the dead person voice. Hold on a second. I’ll be right back.” I could hear her walk away and then a terrible retching sound. A few seconds later, she was back on the phone. “I’d love to come be your Ethel today, darlin’, but I got some bad kind of food poisoning. I don’t know what did it. Harry and I had the same thing for dinner last night, but I’m the one who’s spilling my guts this morning. Will you forgive me?”
“Of course. Get better soon.”
I didn’t know what to do. Breaking Matilda out of a funny farm was definitely a two-person job. Lucy was throwing up, and Bridget was creating a super baby. That left one person. Me.
“What’s the matter?” my mother asked. “Bad news?”
“Sort of. I need to break my friend out of a psych ward, but my friends are busy. I’m not sure how I can do it by myself.”
“I don’t have a Senior Leaf run today. I could do it. I could help,” my mom offered.
“No.”
“I’m good on my feet, and I have a lot of experience lying to officials.”
She had a point. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.
“Gladie, give me a chance. Let me prove myself to you. I’m not a screw-up anymore. I can help you break your friend out.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. Impossible. There’s no way that’s going to happen. You just got out of prison. You used to drive a mobile meth lab on your moped. You showed up half-naked at my prom and tried to have sex with the varsity quarterback. You took me to see Mission Impossible and when you went out for popcorn, you never came back…for two days. There’s no way you’re going to go with me. Never. Not going to happen. Forget about it. No. No. No.”
We decided it was better to take the bus than my Oldsmobile. It was more conspicuous, but it had more horsepower and lavender mood lighting, which I figured might come in handy for Matilda, since she had been tortured and medicated.
My mother hadn’t lied about being a good driver. She was in complete command of the large bus all the way to the hospital. The hospital turned out to be a nondescript building in an industrial park. There was a razor wire chain-link fence all around it and a guard at the front gate.
My mother had brainstormed our break-in strategy, and it worked like a charm. She gave the guard at the gate three joints, and he waved us in.
“Marijuana is very popular,” my mother noted. “It’s like Barbra Streisand mixed with Oreos. Totally irresistible.”
Mom parked the bus in front of the building, and miraculously nobody questioned why a charter bus was parked in the loading zone.
“How are you going to get in to see your friend? Are we going to bribe them with more joints?” my mother asked.
“I don’t think so. They’ve got all kinds of pharmaceuticals in there, and I don’t think they’ll care about an ounce of Maui Wowie. Let me think a minute. I guess I didn’t plan this out very well.”
“Well, you look very official. Maybe they won’t question you. Maybe they’ll think you’re a general.”
It wasn’t the best plan, but it was the only plan we had. “Okay, let’s go with that. Come on, let’s go save Matilda.”
We walked into the hospital and rang the bell at the main desk. The inside was more like a prison than any kind of hospital I’d ever seen. It was all One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and not an ounce of The Prince of Tides. It wasn’t a psychiatric hospital. It was a b
ooby hatch.
There were loud buzzers going off, and the receptionist sat behind a security glass. I focused on being as sane as I could, because we were in the Gitmo of loony bins, and I was terrified that they were going to lock me up with the rest of the poor unfortunates who wound up in this shop of horrors.
I was surprised when my mother took the lead. “General Burger to see one of your patients,” she told the receptionist. “This is a surprise inspection. We don’t want any backtalk.”
“General?” The woman asked. “What do you mean, general?”
My mother hit the wall hard and stomped her foot. “I told you, no backtalk. This is a surprise inspection.”
“Not from the Portland office, again. Why can’t Ellison leave us alone?”
“Because Ellison can’t leave you alone,” my mother insisted. “Ellison knows how to do his job. Ellison realizes that you guys aren’t up to snuff and is just trying to make you better. So, you’re going to buzz in the general immediately and let her get on with it. Or do you want us to do to you what Ellison did last time?”
The woman flinched. “No, no, please not that. Okay, fine.”
She gave us two badges and buzzed us in.
“Wow, Mom,” I whispered as we went in the back. “That was impressive.”
“Shhh, Gladie. Don’t blow your cover.”
Like a general, I didn’t say a word. I remembered to stand up straight and pretend I was as official as I could. Maybe the whole dictator thing was a blessing. I was starting to understand why the maniac wanted to be a fascist leader. It was nice having people not question me. It was nice getting respect, even if the respect was from fear.
My mother gave the receptionist Matilda’s name and ordered her to take us to her. We walked through the tiled hallways until we stopped at a room. The receptionist pressed a code, and the door opened. Inside, Matilda Dare was shackled to a table. An orderly was about to put an IV needle into her arm, and there was a suspicious looking IV bag full of what I assumed was crazy juice, ready to pump through her veins.
“What’s this?” the orderly asked when we entered, although he didn’t seem very interested.
“Ellison sent some kind of general,” the receptionist told him.
“Those aren’t standard-issue shackles,” my mother said, angrily. “The general insists on standard-issue shackles. And she’s still conscious? Do you know the added cost of every minute a patient remains conscious? You people have gone way off the rails. We’re going to have to start fresh here. You’ll be lucky to keep your jobs when we’re done.”
Wow, my mother was really good at this. I finally knew where I got my bullshit skills from. I shook my head and tsked. “This is worse than we thought,” I complained, dropping my voice an octave so I sounded more like a general. “We need to remove the patient and get her to a secure location where we can really lock her down.”
“Are you shitting me?” the man asked. “Do you have transfer orders?”
“Transfer orders? Transfer orders?” My mother shrieked. “We don’t need no stinking transfer orders. Do you know who this general is? If you don’t, you’re in trouble. Remember Ellison.”
Three minutes later we were carrying Matilda out and loading her onto the pot bus.
“Hurry, Mom, before they wonder why the general is riding around in a pot bus,” I urged.
“Don’t worry. This bus has Ludicrous Mode from Tesla. They won’t know what hit them. Hold on to your seats.”
I sat next to Matilda across from the driver’s seat. My mother started the bus, and the lavender mood lighting came on and so did an old Cary Grant movie on the video screens. My mom turned the bus around and waved at the guard to open the gate. Luckily, he didn’t stop us, and we drove out like a bat out of hell.
Once we were free of the place, Matilda rested her head on my shoulder and cried. “It was horrible, Gladie. Thank you so much for saving me. I didn’t think I would get out of there.”
“Why did Rockwell do this to you?” I asked.
“He didn’t know what kind of place it was. It was supposed to be a nice psychiatric facility for me to work on my forgetfulness and OCD. But the minute I got there, they treated me like I was a psycho criminal. It was like Silence of the Lambs.”
“We have that movie if you want to see it,” my mother said.
“Not necessary, but thanks, Mom,” I said. “I’m taking you to my house, and you can hide there,” I told Matilda.
“We need to reach Rockwell and let him know.”
“We will in time,” I said. Matilda was still under the impression that Rockwell was a good husband, even though he put her in a hellhole where they shackled her to the bed. I wanted to kick myself for doubting my grandmother. She had been right. Matilda needed to be unmatched on the double. But for now, she was still in denial. It would take some finessing on my part.
My mother parked the bus in front of my grandmother’s house. “I’ll see you at the wedding?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thank you for your help.”
We didn’t hug goodbye because we weren’t that kind of mother and daughter. But she dropped an extra key to her apartment in my hand. It was the most loving gesture she had ever shown me. Well, that and helping my friend break out of a lockdown facility.
When I opened the front door, my grandmother was already there to give Matilda a big hug. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she told her. “This has never happened to me before. I wanted a life of love for you. I think my sight is wonky.”
Matilda stared at her, as if she was trying to focus. “No need to apologize, Zelda. You were wonderful. You matched me with the love of my life. But everything has gotten muddled. I haven’t been acting right. And Rockwell didn’t know that that place was what it was. He thought it was more like a spa with therapists.”
Grandma and I exchanged looks. Sometimes it took a while for women to accept the truth or even recognize the truth when they saw it. But we had time for her to realize the truth. My grandmother convinced Matilda not to contact Rockwell until after the wedding when she had fully recovered from her ordeal. It took some doing, but since Matilda was so exhausted and traumatized and hadn’t been able to reach Rockwell before, she accepted my grandmother’s advice to just sit tight in the house and recover.
CHAPTER 15
To thine own self be true. Shakespeare wrote that. Are you impressed that your Grandma Zelda knows Shakespeare? I’ve matched quite a few actors in my life, and I’ve picked up a couple things, bubbeleh. One of them is that actors are big pretenders. Let me tell you about pretending…it stinks for matchmaking. The worst kind of pretending is the kind where a match pretends so much that she’s not honest about what she wants. “What do you want?” you’ll ask her, and she’ll respond, “Nothing.” Feh. What a bunch of bull hockey. Dolly, the first step to love is being honest with yourself. What do you feel? What do you want?
Lesson 28, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
The next morning, I woke up in Spencer’s arms. We were lying like spoons. His strong muscular body was wrapped around me, making me feel safe and loved. I had gotten used to sleeping with him in my small bed. In our new house, our bed was a California King, and I wondered if with all of the added room, whether we would still sleep wrapped in each other’s arms, or would he take his side and I take my mine.
I heard my grandmother walking down the stairs. The air conditioning was on full blast, which meant that our heatwave was still going strong. I loved this time of morning in my grandmother’s house when I was cozy in my bed, and I knew that my grandmother was nearby, preparing our morning breakfast.
Happy. That’s what I was. I was happy.
I realized, with a start, however, that it was Saturday, the day before my wedding. Holy crap. The old ball and chain was right around the corner. The till death do us part counter was about to start. I didn’t have a great track record when it came to commitment, but here I was the day b
efore the big Kahuna of all commitments. I had to hand it to me because I hadn’t run away. I hadn’t quit. I was actually going to see something through to the end. Either I had changed a lot in the past year, or Spencer was such a prize that I had to commit to him. In any case, I felt indescribably happy to know that in a little over twenty-four hours, I was going to be tied forever to Spencer.
I was about to turn around and give Spencer a dirty, day-before-the-wedding present, when something big and heavy plopped down on my bed.
“Hey there, little brother, you’re not going to sleep through your stag party, are you?”
Spencer bolted up from the bed. “Peter?” he asked.
It was his older brother, a superspy and hottie metrosexual. Spencer and Peter were freakishly linked and the definition of brotherly love. Peter was supposed to be off saving the world instead of attending our wedding, but here he was, surprising Spencer.
Spencer gave Peter a vise-like bear hug. There was a lot of testosterone in the room. Their hug turned quickly into wrestling, and the two behemoths took up most of the bed.
“I thought you were in the Mideast,” Spencer said, punching Peter hard on his arm.
Peter punched him back. “And miss my little brother’s wedding? No way. I want to see this happen. I want to witness the womanizing jerk get pinned down.” He flopped backward on the bed, lying between Spencer and me and hugged us both to him. “Hello, sister-in-law,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Welcome to the family.”
“She’s not part of the family yet,” Spencer reminded Peter.
“No, but she’s going to be. Little brother, this is the smartest thing you’ve ever done. It’s making me rethink my life, in fact. But there’s not a lot of women out there like Gladie.” He turned toward me and arched an eyebrow. “How about it, Gladie? If you want to change your mind and get the better Bolton boy, just say so. I’ll make it happen.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” Spencer growled. He rolled on top of Peter and started pounding him. They wrestled until they rolled off the bed, and then they wrestled on the floor. I took that as my cue to get up. I went to the bathroom, peed, splashed cold water on my face, and went downstairs.