Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

  Maura quite literally didn’t know how to think about the question. She didn’t believe her thoughts were different from anyone else’s, except the nimrods and dimwits for whom thoughts were like baths and a new one every few days seemed sufficient.

  Mick Coury had been seventeen when schizophrenia unaccountably descended upon him, and he was only twenty-one now, but he didn’t remember much about the fabric of his thoughts before his illness. It seemed to him it was something like the difference between color television and black-and-white. The basic environment of thought was recognizably the same, and yet some element was drained from it. He tried to explain this while he was whipping together cartons.

  “Until we get better,” he said, “the best we can hope for is like those colorized movies that make everything too bright and phony looking.”

  “Some things look better in black and white,” she said.

  “Chess,” Rhine offered, as if he’d been a part of the conversation all along.

  “It’s not that I regret getting sick,” Mick said reasonably. “I never would have met Karly if I hadn’t gotten sick. Or you. Or everybody.

  I’d be a totally different person, which means that the person I am wouldn’t exist.”

  Alonso left the line for the men’s room. Sounds of grunting and squealing quickly followed. He made loud noises when he jerked off, vocalizations, shouts without words. Everyone in the room was used to this rough music and ignored it. It was amazing what you could get used to. Amazing, too, what you couldn’t get used to, like Rhine and the ringing telephone. What was it about this place that she wasn’t yet used to? The green-tasting water. Confinement. She wanted to go to Alonso’s party. She wasn’t in any way suicidal. Shouldn’t her desire to go out and have fun prove that?

  Rhine left his spot to show Karly the wrapper to a McDonald’s double cheeseburger that had no grease stain. He kept it in his wallet. He had quit eating animals several months earlier, a fact he announced to the group with some regularity. “I don’t have any trouble being vegetarian,” he told Karly, “as long as I know at the end of the week I can have thirty minutes of meat.” He revealed that he could eat five double cheeseburgers in thirty minutes.

  Maura’s sophomore year of high school she had been in love with a senior, Skinner, who was addicted to amphetamines, which suited her fine since he was a bastard without them. Speed made him chummy and sweet. He wanted to give her things and have her jerk him off. The next day he’d want his stuff back. She would return it and jerk him off again. Maybe it hadn’t been love, but she’d gotten used to him in a way that was more than habit. She didn’t get off with him, speed or anything else, except to smoke a joint now and then, or drink some rum. They dropped acid together twice, smoked hash a couple of times, did ecstasy if they didn’t have to pay for it, sniffed cocaine if it was around, and took downers if they didn’t have money for booze. But that was it. She wasn’t into drugs. She did the scoring, though, because Skinner had a wussy side to him that kept thinking he’d get arrested, which he finally did.

  Maura got along fine with Skinner until his right leg swelled to the size of his waist. He passed out on the way to the hospital. She drove him there even though she didn’t have a license. She saved his life, which no one seemed to notice. The doctors cut his pants off, and he got busted in the emergency room for the stuff in his pockets, right while they were rolling him into surgery to amputate. A tough day, no question, but he never did go to prison. Instead, he spent a few months in drug and no-leg rehab, a local, crappy place, not much like Onyx Rehab. The nurses there didn’t like Maura, and neither did Skinner. She had nothing to do with the blood clot that almost killed him, and she didn’t understand why he quit liking her, except that he wasn’t doing speed anymore. A person would think if he lost his leg he’d be happy to have a girl who still wanted to jerk him off, stump and all. She smuggled amphetamines into the clinic, but he wouldn’t take them. He wound up going to some college in the northwest his parents wouldn’t name, as if Maura was the bad influence.

  The last time she saw him, he had called her fat and a bitch, and—thinking she might have missed the substance of his mood—a fat bitch. She had thought: This fight is going to be nasty. It would include screaming and accusations. Each would bring up hurtful memories, and there’d be temporary truces, and when one of them broke the truce, the other would get to throw something or slam a door. Realizing this pleased her. It promised they would remain together for at least the duration of the fight, and if they made it that far, there would be make-up sex—just a hand-job, but sometimes she took off her shirt, and his mouth on her breasts was like the plucking of strings, as if she were a bass fiddle and he knew how to play. And she liked his cock, too, in her fist, how it grew and trembled, how it made their connection literal. They were denied their fight. His parents arrived and ushered her out. Thinking about it pissed her off, and she reached again into her purse.

  “Sometimes,” Mick said, “I wonder about those years when I’d think without thinking about it, and how I wasted all those ordinary thoughts, like I blew my sanity on The Simpsons or which shirt to wear with which pair of socks, and I wish I had some of that clearheadedness now, but then I wonder which thoughts I would have kept and how I’d know to keep them.”

  The unmedicated Mick liked to talk, the words building up speed until his tongue could no longer keep up with his brain. Right up to that point, though, he could sound like a philosopher. When the phone rang again, she had a moment of regret, thinking it might interrupt his train of thought. Rhine, that human dildo, should have guessed she was doing the calling. They were not supposed to bring cell phones to the sheltered workshop; therefore, she must not have one. She understood how Rhine’s teensy brain worked. She also understood that she cared more about Mick, whom she had never even kissed, than she ever cared about Skinner.

  “I know I’d keep the thoughts about serious things,” Mick went on as the phone recommenced its ringing, “like love and being a good person and whether there’s a god, but I can’t actually remember ever thinking about those things, which makes me think that sanity is when you don’t have to work hard to think nothing and it’s not frightening to yourself or others to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.”

  Rhine shrieked, “That could be a very important call!”

  “I used to smoke pot all the time,” Maura said. Rhine ran past her to the office and rattled the door. “It made me chill out, but maybe chilled out was bad for me. I was high when I cut myself up. You, on the other hand, could use some chill.”

  “When we get better,” he said, “how do you think we’ll remember being like this?”

  At this moment she realized something she had long worked to avoid understanding: he was more fucked up than she was. Maybe a lot more, despite how he could talk, how he could be nice even to that Cecil character. She gave her head the tiniest of shakes. “I wouldn’t mind if we were always just like this.”

  Rhine disappeared into the kitchen, which was off-limits, and he quickly returned, apologizing to the cooks, who didn’t like anyone from the sheltered workshop. He returned to the line, but the phone rang again and he dropped his spider carton and jerked around, his agitation palpable to everyone in the room.

  “It’s not humorous, Maura,” Rhine said.

  “Look for Crews outside,” she suggested.

  “We’re not supposed to go outside. It is forbidden for workshop members to go outside during working hours except for breaks or in case of emergency.”

  “If it’s not an emergency, then just cool out.”

  “All right,” he said and nodded convincingly. “That’s the way to think about it.”

  Almost immediately, the phone in the office rang again.

  Rhine picked up Crews’s chair on the way to the office. He swung the chair at the window, which shattered. He stepped onto the chair and reached over the ragged glass in the frame to pick
up the phone. “Onyx Springs Sheltered Workshop,” he said. “Rhine speaking.”

  A few things that have been omitted:

  The California Highway Patrolman who stood near the wrecked Road Runner was wearing the traditional high-domed, flat-brimmed hat, embellished with a metallic emblem (a golden eagle perched on the letter C), a blue hatband, and matching blue tassels. The front of the dome was dented on either side, as if from forceps.

  The best local weatherman, whose forecasts were never wrong, had predicted a morning shower, but there was no rain and there would be no rain for weeks. “Yesterday’s precipitation,” he would later concede, “was so light as to escape our instruments.”

  When Candler was eight years old, after his sister came home from the hospital with a mouthful of wires holding her teeth in place, their father took him aside to say, “We know you’re covering for Pook.” Pook was the family name for Candler’s big brother. Something was wrong with him—a form of autism, Candler now believed. Young Jimmy Candler had said nothing to correct his father, letting his brother take the rap. Certain acts and omissions one never forgets.

  In 1976 Ohio congressman Wayne Hays was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had employed for two years a secretary whose only apparent skills were in the bedroom. The secretary, a former Miss Virginia, famously admitted, “I can’t type. I can’t file. I can’t even answer the phone.” Though she was christened Betty Lou, by that time in her life she called herself Elizabeth—Elizabeth Ray. This woman, who capitalized on the affair by appearing in the buff in Playboy, is no relation (by blood or metaphor) to Elizabeth “Lise” Ray, who had not even been conceived at the time of the scandal. The two have no connection but the coincidence of names.

  By all accounts, April 2008 was an altogether ordinary month. Witness: Frontier Airlines filed for bankruptcy; an earthquake struck West Salem, Illinois; Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania Democratic primary; global warming egged on tornadoes in the state of Virginia; and President of Russia Vladimir Putin while meeting with President of the United States George W. Bush asked privately what the commander in chief thought of Viagra. Bush confided that his mother crushed the pills and added the powder to cut flowers to prolong their blooms.

  While Karly’s IQ on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale was duly noted (65), the IQ scores for the others are conspicuous by their absence:

  Hays, Wayne: 88

  Mendez, Guillermo: 104

  Olsson, Rainyday: 115

  Powell, Lolly: 122

  Putin, Vladimir: 77

  Ray, Lise: 131

  Rhine, Bellamy: 84

  Sinatra, Frank: 97

  Trucker, Long Haul: 103

  Whitman, Bob: 91

  Wood, Maura: 136

  Atlas, Billy: 111

  Barnstone, Patricia: 113

  Bush, George: 96

  Candler, James: 118

  Candler, Violet: 133

  Coury, Mick: 130

  Crews, Les: 102

  Driver, Road Runner: 109

  Duran, Alonso: 56

  Egri, John: 111

  Fresnay, Cecil: 68

  Hao, Clay: 129

  Billy Atlas, who had lived in Candler’s house now almost a month, was the only one of Candler’s friends who had been around long enough to recall Candler’s big brother. Pook had shadowed James and Billy, a hulking and silent presence, but now and again he came in handy. Pook owned an old one-speed bike with no seat—their father repeatedly installed a seat that Pook repeatedly removed—but he could keep up with James and Billy on their ten-speeds. On one occasion, at a playground where James and Billy joined a basketball game, Pook caught kids trying to steal the bikes. He roared at them. The kids scrambled off, the basketball game fell apart, and Billy became hysterical with laughter. Pook laughed, as well, punctuating his high-pitched chortle with new roars. The moment was unforgettable for Candler, as it was the only time he could recall hearing his brother laugh. Pook would kill himself when he was eighteen and Candler, twelve.

  Karly Hopper arrived for counseling in the clothing Candler had seen her assemble that morning. The T-shirt puckered slightly at her waist, creating a gap the size of a man’s finger. “Good afternoon, Mr. James Candler.” She had a smile from which one could not look away. “It’s Thursday in the afternoon and here I am.” She stuck out her hand. He was seated, and her arm was extended stiffly, directly over his head.

  Candler ducked past her arm as got up from his chair. They grasped hands. “Good to see you, Karly. You’re looking very chipper.”

  “Yes, I am. Very chipper this Thursday in the afternoon.” She shook her hair, another piece of her limited but effective repertoire. “You look so good in that jacket.”

  The jacket to his suit was on the back of his chair.

  “Well,” he said, “the chair looks good in it.”

  They had routine questions to run through. She gave him her time sheets, and he calculated her productivity rates. He was in no hurry to get to his real subject. She crossed her legs, and he was happy she was wearing jeans. It didn’t matter that she was impaired, she knew how to manipulate men. At least it seemed that way. In any case, Mick Coury was no challenge for her. Most of the schizophrenics Candler dealt with did not hallucinate—or not often—and rarely acted noticeably insane, what Hao called TV crazy. There were plenty of seriously delusional people in the world, but Candler rarely worked with them. Such clients weren’t ready for the kind of evaluation he offered, and the Center no longer accepted severely damaged clients—a policy change Egri had instituted. A business decision. No one with the diagnosis of borderline personality was admitted and no seriously intellectually disabled clients. None of the recent schizophrenics had a history of violence, unless it was merely against themselves, and even then, no suicides who used firearms in the attempt.

  Egri targeted adolescents in the Center’s advertisements. An increasing number of parents, it seemed, were convinced they could not handle their children. Which meant the clients were getting younger and more docile, and Candler was more likely to see mild schizophrenics or kids who’d had temporary meltdowns, young people who actually had a decent chance of recovery. For the schizophrenics he saw, it was more like they over anticipated, responding to the imagined consequences of actions rather than what was actually said or done. They often became so supersensitive that their emotional responses lost connection with the catalysts. Their minds played tricks, crossing wires, like marionettes whose strings were spitefully misaligned.

  Bob Whitman had once introduced Candler to a particularly bright schizophrenic with an interest in the theater, and Bob tried to show off by quoting Shakespeare: To be or not to be, that is the question, a quotation so familiar as to have the opposite effect. The schizophrenic immediately replied, “That’ll cost you a penny.” It was a crazy response, but Candler believed he could trace the logic. The quotation was from Hamlet, and Hamlet was the prince of Denmark, and a famous line from the play is Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and rotten things smell, or have a scent, which has the same sound as cent, one penny. The connections were there. That the kid came up with the line in a split second was what made him insane.

  Mick Coury’s thoughts raced and his emotions did, too. His mother had described a morning when she asked him to pass the milk and he burst into tears. Candler traced that emotional curve. The request from one’s mother for milk was a reversal of natural roles; in this reversal resides the passage of time and the altering of relationships. His mother was aging and their connection would one day end. Add to this Mick’s sexual awakening and guilt is layered onto the sadness of separation. No wonder the boy was reduced to tears. Mick was an emotional freight train, and a single penny on the track could send him crashing into the landscape.

  Enter Karly Hopper.

  “Okay, another good week of work,” Candler said, putting
down the time sheets. Her supervisor was supposed to add observations, but Les Crews had merely written Slow as molasses. “Did you get your pay?” The sheltered workshop paid their clients every other Thursday and made a group trip to the bank on the subsequent Fridays.

  “I have money in the three places,” she said. He had given her a strategy for keeping track of cash. She kept spending money in her pocketbook, money to deposit in the bank in the zippered liner of her purse, and emergency money in her ID folder, which she wore around her neck. She patted each of the three places.

  “You’re getting good at this,” Candler said.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “I can make change, too.” The smile faded. “Except for . . .”

  “Still having trouble with nickels?”

  She nodded seriously. “Why do they make them bigger than dimes?”

  “Let’s don’t worry about nickels today.”

  That brought back the smile. “And I didn’t break a window at the workshop,” she said. “Rhine broke the window, but I’m not telling on him.” She absolutely beamed.

  Candler made a note to call Crews. “How are things at home?”

  “My mother and sister are at home, but my father is dead and not at home. People die. Even people you know sometimes.”

  Candler nodded. Karly’s mother and sister lived outside Los Angeles. “Good, but how about your house here?”

  “What house?”

  “The house you live in.”

  “I live in the same house that I’m living in for a long time.” After a moment, she added, “Where I live, it’s very . . . treey.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How is your house, Mr. James Candler?”

  “I have a few trees in my yard, but nothing like the ones on your block.”

  “The trees on my block are very treey,” she said and laughed. “That’s so funny.” Then she added, “I’m sorry about your house.”

  “Oh, I like it all right.”