A Brief Lunacy (6 page)

“I'm making you some socks for Christmas.”

“He isn't going to be there long. He's leaving, too. He wants me to leave with him, get a job, an apartment. Do you think I can do it, Mom?”

“Of course you can. I'll give you some furniture from the old house. It's still in storage.”

“Do you have a bed?”

“Your old bed needs a mattress. Daddy's and mine does, too, I think. We went painting today. And a young man stopped in here. He was camping and his gear was stolen. He stayed for supper.”

“What does he look like? Is he beautiful? Does he love me?” And then she hangs up. I hold the receiver to my ear until an electronic voice says, “Please hang up and try again.” They all think we're still talking and I don't know how to end the conversation. Jonah steps forward as if he wants to take the phone.

“Well, lovely to talk to you, dear. We'll see you at Thanks-giving.” What can I do? Carl knows. He knows everything. Hans and Marte pretend to study their letters, glance back and forth from the board to their letter stand. Carl moves close, offers his hand to me. And Jonah glares at me. What have I done? Who is he? Does he know something? Does he know Sylvie? He's not just a camper who's been robbed,
is he?

J
ESSIE'S RIGHT
. I've never been able to fix Sylvie. You'd think with all my medical training I'd be able to fix anything if I tried hard enough, and God knows with my daughter I've tried everything. Sometimes she's right there, but more often than not she is somewhere else where sane people can't go, like Never-Never-Land. I read somewhere that many psychotics describe an identical crazy world and voices that use the same words. How could people who don't even know one another come up with the same crazy place? It makes me wonder if it is a real world where only the privileged few are allowed and doctors who fix bones are not among them.

This boy who's barged his way into our house could probably go there, to that place. He's most likely harmless
but there's something about him that makes me uneasy, like the way he's looking at Jessie. Almost as if he knows us and hates us. But he doesn't know us. He reminds me a little of myself at that age. Angry about the war. Enraged at the Germans. So enraged that I couldn't even concentrate on my studies. But that's behind me. We move on.

“Come on, Jess,” I say. She's unsteady and if it weren't for Hans and Marte and Jonah watching, she'd be sobbing about Sylvie and angry at me for not making things better. If I embrace her she will break down. I have to help her be strong. “Let's finish the game.”

Is it because I'm so large that people seem to listen to me? Jonah backs off and resumes fussing with the counters. Jessie returns to her seat, picks up five letters from the upturned pile, lines them up on her holder.

Hans plays next. His fingers are milky white, delicate, the fingers of a man who does nothing. I remember hands like that in the camp, hands that did nothing but fill gloves and tap a riding crop on an upturned palm. He's retired from something scientific but I've never talked to him about it. I think he was an oculist. His voice has just a trace of an accent, but Marte's is still strong. He wouldn't have been quite old enough to have worked in the camp or been in the army. He would have been a child, like me. His word is
tattoo,
crossing the
T
of Jessie's
starch.

“Hey, isn't that a tattoo on your arm?” Jonah asks.

“Yes, I often wondered about that,” Hans says. “You don't seem the type for a tattoo. Did you get that in the service?”

“Just something I picked up in my youth.”

“What is it?” Hans asks.

“A fish,” I say. “Had it done one night after a bit too much beer. Just an impulsive kid thing.” I tug my sweatshirt sleeve down to my wrist.

When Marte begs off because of a headache, Jonah takes her place at the Scrabble board. His mind is sharp. He makes words like
wadmal
and
zeatin
and we have to look them up in the dictionary to make sure they're really words. Is that what he does, study words?

When Jonah excuses himself to use the bathroom, Hans says there's something very weird about the boy, but he reminds me of some of the young interns who worked with me at the hospital: clever, astute, full of facts but a bit naive.

“I once heard eagles mate in the air. Is that true?” I ask when he returns. After all, he says he's an ornithologist.

“Carl,” Jessie says. “What a question.”

“Actually,” Jonah says, “that's a fascinating question. In fact, they are the only bird that mates in the air.”

“Oh, really?” Jessie says. She has calmed down. She tends to overreact to some things. The uneasiness she has felt since Jonah's glare upset her earlier is replaced with a sincerity and confidence, but I'm not sure that it's true about the eagles. I heard it somewhere, but it seems preposterous that those huge birds mate without something to push against. I'm going to look that up in the bird book after he leaves.

“Where are you going with all this knowledge?” I ask. “What do you want to do with it?”

“Research on endangered birds, I think. Especially ducks. Do you know the harlequin? That's what I'm looking for.
I've heard they've been seen near here.”

“Do they look like a clown?”

“They do, in fact. Give me a piece of paper and some markers or crayons. I'll draw one.”

“But the game isn't finished,” Hans says.

Jonah follows me to the chest where we keep our painting supplies. I hand him a sketch pad and a package of colored pencils.

“What's that?” he asks.

“Just a tree. A pine tree.”

“Why so many paintings of a tree?”

“I like trees.”

Jonah's audacity intrigues me. His social skills are lacking but he's bright. Jessie might call him sassy.

Back at the table, he draws a squat duck with a ringed neck and white head spots. “There it is. Ever see one?”

“No,” Jessie says. “Not like that.” She's fine now. There is no sign of hysteria about Sylvie. The young man seems just a tad eccentric but many intelligent people are a bit odd. The poor kid. Sometimes I wonder why I'm so rude and insensitive to people.

“How about it, Carl?” Jonah says. “Have you got a spot on that couch for my poor bod? I'll be leaving first thing in the morning. Check out the police station. Well, what do you say?”

“Well, I suppose that's the least I could do,” I say.

“What's the least you could do, Carl?” Jonah asks.

“Let you sleep on the couch,” I say. “I'll think about it.”

Hans and Marte seem surprised I even entertained the
thought, but they don't speak up. I wouldn't put up with them if it weren't for Jessie. She needs friends. Hans and Marte make leaving noises, say that Marte needs her sleep because she has to head out early tomorrow. Hans says maybe he'll drop by. I'm glad to see them go but I should have asked them to drive the boy to the top of the hill. I would have if Hans hadn't commented on how mean I was.

“Mr. Jensen,” Jonah says, “I truly appreciate your letting me stay.”

“That's Dr. Jensen, and I said you could have dinner. Not spend the night.”

“I beg to differ,” Jonah says. “You clearly invited me for the night.”

“Carl, the boy doesn't even have a hat. Remember Sam when he hitched to Alabama and people put him up?”

“Jess, we don't know this boy.”

“And what of Sylvie? Is someone letting her sleep on their couch?”

“There's a tent in the garage, isn't there, Jess?”

“Don't be such a curmudgeon,” she says.

“I'll split that wood after breakfast and I'll be gone.”

Jonah asks for videos. He says he has a hard time falling asleep in a strange place. Jessie pulls out what few videos we have:
The Piano, Thelma and Louise, Fried Green Tomates, Sophie's Choice,
all women's movies. I don't watch movies very often. I apologize for the selection, but he says they're fine, that he'll keep the sound turned down so as not to bother our sleep.

She goes upstairs and I notice she looks behind her for
the dog that's been dead for weeks. Jonah watches while I maneuver the pillow down from the top shelf in the closet and choose a couple of warm wool blankets from the basket on the floor.

“Wow. You play the violin?”

“Not anymore. A long time ago. In another life.”

“Looks like no one's played it for years. That's too bad. What happened to the bridge? And the neck looks a little warped. Looks like it's been around.” Jonah reaches for the violin.

“Please leave it alone,” I say.

“I used to play violin. Suzuki. When I was little. And then the youth orchestra. What did you play? Classical? Bluegrass?”

“I told you. I don't play anymore.”

“But what did you play when you played?”

“Just little tunes. It's late. I'm going up.”

Did I really invite him to stay? Why did I do that? Is it too late to throw him out? Jessie would have a fit. I don't offer him anything to sleep in. My pajamas are too big, and besides, young people don't wear pajamas anymore. When I climb the stairs I hear him rustling around with the blankets, popping the video box open, slipping the movie into the VCR. And somewhere inside me there is a dread that I haven't felt since the war and I don't know what to do with it.

Jessie is asleep. She's an angel. Her hair feathers over the pillow like gray corn silk. This is the only time I see her hair loose, and it reminds me of my mother's hair. When we arrived
at the camp her hair was dark as a moonless night, but it turned gray, actually almost white. We were allowed to keep our hair. Isn't that strange? The others we could see over the fence had their heads shaved but families on our block didn't. When we were made to remove our clothes, the women tried to hide their nakedness with their hair, but of course that was futile. My grandmother tried. She held strands of silver hair over her flapping breasts when they took her. She couldn't look at us. She was too ashamed. Many of us had our hair turn from black to white in a short period of time. Even some of the young women.

I kiss Jessie's forehead and she stirs. I undress in the near dark, the only light coming from the downstairs television. My pajamas are somewhere on the floor where I dropped them this morning. Was it only this morning? The day seems long. Was it just today Jessie made the smoked salmon omelet? The pajamas are nowhere. Then I notice them folded on my pillow. Jessie. When I reach for them, the fish on my arm glimmers as if it had real scales. What kind of a fish is it? I don't know. I just told them to cover up what was there with something else. Something peaceful. No lions or skulls. No naked women. They chose a fish. Just some kind of fish. It doesn't matter what kind it is.

She turns toward me when I lower myself into the bed. Her mouth moves in sleep, making me wonder about her dream. I bring her close to me until her breath warms my neck. The television drones on and on. Should I go down and ask him to switch it off? We turn in our bed, toward each other, away from each other, together. Jessie sleeps like
a child except that every once in a while she snorts or hums and I think she is dreaming of our daughter.

Sylvie was the most enchanting child. “Popsie,” she called me. If she weren't ill, she could be a model or a leading lady or a dancer. I used to imagine that she came from the woods, even before she was born. That's why I named her Sylvie, for the forest. A sprite. An elf. A fairy. She loved the pine tree. She still does. I think it's because she can hide there in the safe spot where the large branch juts from the trunk. Now it has that crack. We'll probably lose it in the next storm.

“Giddyap, Popsie,” she said. “To the magic tree. Faster.”

She rode on my shoulders, long legs dangling on my chest while she held fast around my neck and kicked her feet on my ribs. It was a game we played. We'd leave the boys with Jessie and spend the morning in the woods. In those days we only spent a few weeks up here every summer in the little cabin, which is long gone.

“Come on, Popsie, you come up, too.”

“I'm too big to climb trees.”

“But I'll be all alone up here and they'll get you.”

“Who, little sprite? There's no one here.”

She perched on the lowest limb with her arms spread out and begged me to climb, to get away from them, to be safe. I should have realized something then. But aren't all kids scared of the boogeyman?

“Look, Pops, there. And there. Behind the rock. They're coming. The tree will protect us.”

“OK. I'll try.” And I'd climb. Me. Big, bulky me. It wasn't really difficult because there were stubs of branches
we'd thinned that made perfect steps. At the crotch was a hollowed-out place where we stored our cookies and juice. We covered it with an old plastic dishpan to keep it dry. And there we'd sit for a long time, our legs hanging down, watching for intruders. Once, we sat so still that a doe browsed with her fawns right underneath us until Sylvie sneezed. I haven't climbed that tree in years.

Jonah finishes
Thelma and Louise
and I picture the soar into the Grand Canyon. He gets up from the couch. I can hear the springs creak. Another video goes into the VCR. It's
Sophie's Choice
. I know because of the music.

The clock reads almost two. I consider shutting the bedroom door but I don't feel comfortable with the door shut. And besides, I want to know what is going on downstairs. I hear the dialogue, the piano music, and occasional hushed comments from Jonah, and I wish he would fall asleep. I pad over to the door and swing it toward the jamb. Not shut tight. Ajar enough for me to hear movement.

My hand slips underneath Jessie's nightgown to her breasts, where it is warm and slightly damp. When she was young they were hard, dense, but now they rest like empty silk sacks in my palm. When Sylvie was born, Jessie had a hard time nursing because she was so full, breasts hard as tennis balls, but she kept at it. When Sylvie was just a week old, I came home from the hospital to find Jessie sitting in the living room in a straight-backed chair, sobbing quietly while Sylvie sucked at her. I guided her to the rocker, folded a warm facecloth on her forehead, sang a little song. And there we sat while Sylvie nursed for the first time with vigor
until Jessie's breasts were almost emptied. She didn't wean her until she was pregnant with Charlie.