Crazy Love You (21 page)

They were trying to lead me to my own conclusions about Priss, using pointed questions such as: Why is it that Priss doesn't go to school? How come she won't show you where she lives? What's her last name? How is it that she's out in the woods at all hours of the day and night? Is she an orphan? Does she have a family? Where are they?

I had answers for all their questions, at first. Priss was home-schooled; her mother used to be a teacher. She wasn't allowed to have friends because her mother didn't let her bring people home. Her mother worked at a hospital now, so she was gone a lot and Priss came and went as she chose. Priss never knew her father. Her last name . . . well, Priss said it was a secret.

These were the answers Priss had given me. Do they seem specious? Does it seem like her story had a lot of holes? Whatever. I knew she was real. No one was going to convince me otherwise. Especially now that I knew someone else had seen her.

I had given up on trying to convince my dad and Dr. Crown, and “admitted” that Priss wasn't real, just a friend I'd made up in my terrible loneliness. I had apologized for worrying everyone. No, I didn't play with her anymore. It was silly, childish. I'd moved on. It was just easier that way.

But in reality I was spending more time with Priss than ever. I was sneaking out into the woods while my father was working or sleeping. And she was always there, waiting for me, ready to play or just lie among the graves and watch the clouds or stars. She was all I had, the only one in the world, other than my mother, who didn't think I was a freak, a liar, and an arsonist.

Then there was the rage thing, which was a little confusing. Apparently, when I got really angry, I kind of lost it. There was the incident at school where I had threatened to burn Mikey's house down, according to witnesses. I had vehemently denied this; but so many people had seen it, that even I started to wonder. Then there was the attack on Dr. Crown. He said that a kind of blank look came over my face before it set into a mask of fury. I lunged at him, called him a cocksucker and a string of other unpleasant names, closed my hands around his throat. My father apparently stepped in, subdued and held me until I calmed down. After which point I wept, went briefly catatonic, then fell asleep.

The weird thing was that I had only the fuzziest recall of this, so vague and odd that it was less real to me than a dream. It seemed like a lie, except that I could tell by the fear on my father's face that he was telling the truth. There was always a part of me that didn't believe I had this capacity for blind rage. There was always a part of me that thought maybe all these people were making it up, trying to fuck with me in some vast conspiracy that spanned years, and different schools, different cities, people who were strangers to one another. But that was probably not realistic.

“How have things been for you at school socially?” asked Dr. Crown.

“Socially?”

“Tell me about your friends, your interests,” said Dr. Crown. “How's art club?”

Art club: middle school's only haven for freaks, an oasis in a sea of misery. There at the long, wooden, paint-splattered tables, beneath the colorful mobiles that hung from the ceiling and the artwork of ages papering the walls, Miss Rose at her easel with the overhead fluorescents off, the music playing from a squat pink boom box by the open window—there I was at peace, at one with myself and the pencil in my hand.

“You're very gifted, Ian.” That's what Miss Rose had said to me early on, and I carried the sound of her voice with me, remembered her words when I was feeling like a loser. “You'll have a career in the arts if you want one.”

I had art class every Tuesday and Thursday, and art club every Wednesday and Friday after school. So almost every day I could disappear into that room. On Friday afternoons Miss Rose let me stay after the late bus and wait for my father to come get me after he got off work.

“It's good,” I replied to Dr. Crown.

“You're very talented,” he said. He reached over to his desk and picked up two pieces of paper, large, heavy stock like the paper I favored for my sketches.

“Where did you get those?” I said, recognizing them immediately.

“Your father visited with your art teacher on parents' night. She showed him some of your work. Didn't he tell you?”

“No,” I said. I leaned forward and stretched out my hand. His eyes lingered on the drawings for a moment, and then he handed them to me.

“Who is that?” he asked, pointing to the one on the top.

“No one,” I said. I stared at her; I didn't have her yet—the color of her hair, the line of her jaw, that particular light in her eyes. None of it was perfect. I was years from getting her just right. If I'd had a pencil in my hand at that moment, I'd have started erasing, redrawing.

“Is that Priss?” he asked.

“Priss isn't real,” I said.

He gave me a quick nod. “But is that how you imagine her?”

“I don't know.”

“The girl in that picture. Well, she's not really a girl. She's a woman, a very sensuous, well-developed young woman.”

I felt my throat tighten, heard a kind of roar in my ears. I cleared my throat, tried to calm myself the way Dr. Crown taught me to—with my breath, with my thoughts.
Everything is okay. I can let the anger wash through me, acknowledge and release it.

“Have I upset you?” he asked. “I'm sorry. Perhaps your father should have asked you before he showed these to me. I thought he had.”

He did seem sorry, and looked concerned with a wrinkle in his brow as he leaned forward in his chair. But I was shaking, my breathing growing ragged. Why had Miss Rose given these to my father? Why had my father given them to the doctor? I felt deeply betrayed, ashamed.
Everything is okay. I can let the anger wash through me, acknowledge and release it.

“You always describe her as a young girl, about your age,” the doctor went on. “Waiflike and pale. But this woman is powerful, sexual.”

I kept staring at her. The eyes were almost right—amused, knowing, and something else. Something dark. I felt some of my anger start to die down, looking at her.

“Sexual fantasy is normal at your age, Ian.” How old was I then? Twelve going on thirteen?

“It's not like that,” I said. The blinds in his office were dusty; the couch beneath me was hard and uncomfortable.

“I used to read comics when I was your age,” he said. “I had the world's biggest crush on Barbara Gordon. You know, Batgirl.”

It was the right tactic. I suddenly saw him as something other than a distant authority figure, someone who was trying to get into my head to tell everyone how fucked up I was.

“Really?”

“Really.” He nodded. “She was hot.”

We both started to laugh a little, and I felt my anger dissipate—at least toward him.

“She reminds me a little of Dark Phoenix,” said the doctor, nodding at the sketch. “She has that edge to her. Rage.”

I hadn't seen it until he mentioned it. But he was right. Dark Phoenix was one of my early favorites, so certainly she was a strong inspiration. But Priss was her own thing.

“Not that I think it's derivative,” he said quickly. “I mean, your drawing is totally original. I can just see how you might have been influenced.”

I felt myself opening up to him as I talked about how I'd found another world within the pages of those comic books. It was a place where the battle of good versus evil was easy to understand. Where the good guys were heroes—bold, brave, and powerful—who never failed to vanquish the bad.

“The real world is never so simple,” said the doctor. “I understand. In your life, the ultimate symbol of good, of nurturing and love, did something unspeakable. It must be comforting to dwell in a world where things are easier to understand.”

“She didn't mean it. It wasn't her,” I said. There was that familiar rush of defensive anger. “She's sick.”

“That's true,” he said with a careful nod. “Your mother was suffering from postpartum psychosis. She is mentally ill. But the impact of her actions has been life rupturing for you. And it's okay to experience the full range of emotions associated with that—even rage. If we can deal with your feelings head-on now, they won't consume you. You won't seek other ways to comfort yourself, to blow off steam.”

I nodded, even though I didn't understand what he meant. I was already living in a fantasy world, eating myself into oblivion. It wouldn't be a long time before I started experimenting with drugs. He was a good doctor, who offered solid advice, but I was too far gone. And frankly it was just easier to
eat
my feelings than to deal with them.

I don't remember the end of that session. I do recall getting the feeling that the doctor thought he'd made some kind of breakthrough with me. Maybe he believed that there was some connection in my mind between my mother and Priss. There was only one problem with his theory. Priss wasn't a larger-than-life comic book character. Priss was real.

The next week, there was a fire at my school. It happened over a weekend, late at night. So no one was hurt. Only one room suffered damage. The art room.

•  •  •

I ran across the beach with Binky calling after me from the porch. But by the time I reached the place where I had seen her standing, she was gone. I was sweating and winded, bent over with a terrible stitch in my side.

“Priss!” I yelled into the black night. The surf carried my voice away, drowning it in that eternal roar. “Priss! Stay away from them!”

But no one was there. I sank to my knees and the wet sand soaked through my jeans immediately; the surf lapped in and washed over my calves and shoes. The salt water was frigid, slicingly cold, and my legs went numb. The big beach houses stood back behind the tall sea grass, their windows glowing orange. I don't know how long I stayed there, kneeling and staring into the black, calling after a woman who obviously wasn't there. Finally, Megan came out after me.

“What's wrong with you?” she said. She had her arms wrapped around herself, kept her distance. The bruises on her face looked like shadows.

“I thought I saw someone,” I said.

She glanced around us at the vast dark beach, making a point of gazing up and down. “There's no one here.”

She was right. There was no one and nothing as far as the eye could see.

“Did you hit my father?” she asked. Her voice broke a little. “He wants to call the
police
.”

“No,” I said. Hit Binky? Had I hit him? “Of course not. I would
never
hurt you or your family.”

She moved in closer. She still loved me then, still wanted to pretend none of this was happening. Or that it was something that
had
happened, and that would be over and forgotten, something that we would wonder about when we were old, watching our grandchildren play on this very beach, looking back at that very same house. She reached down for me and pulled me to my feet. I moved to her, grabbed her, and held her against me. She felt so good, so soft and warm.

“Ian,” she whispered.

“I love you,” I said into her hair. Lately, the words just sounded desperate, like I was trying to convince her, to convince myself. She sighed deep and long, pressed into me, and held on.

“I love them—Binky and Julia. You—all of you—are everything I could have hoped for.”

She was shaking her head as she pulled back from me, big blue tears pooling in her eyes and then rolling down her dewy pink skin. The wind was tossing her hair. She shouldn't have been out there. She should have been resting. Binky was right; I wasn't taking care of her as I should be.

“My dad said you were staring at something on the beach. Something that he didn't see. You stood suddenly and started to run. He tried to stop you and you turned to swing at him. He dodged it mostly, but you clipped him on the jaw.”

“No,” I said.

“There's a bruise,” she said. “He's got ice on it.”

“I couldn't have,” I said.

“He said that you didn't even look like yourself.” She was shivering, pulling her sweater tight around her.

“Megan,” I said. But then I didn't know what to say.

“You better tell me everything,” she said. “You better tell me right now.”

“Not here,” I said.

I looked up and down the beach. If Priss had been there, she was gone. Unless she was hiding in the tall grass like the tiger she was, watching us.

Megan looked back at the house; I could see Binky on the porch. She started moving toward him.

“I'll meet you at the Scout,” she said. “I don't think my parents want to see you again tonight.”

I watched her walk away, and I wished so hard that I could undo everything bad that had happened over the last few days—hell, over my whole life.

I sat in the Scout and waited nearly an hour. Megan finally came out. Julia and Binky stood in the doorway, but they didn't try to stop her. Maybe they already had, and she'd prevailed. She'd obviously convinced Binky not to call the police. I didn't remember hitting him, but the knuckles on my right hand were swollen and red, aching.

Megan, pale and shaky, climbed into the vehicle. She ran a hand through her hair and fastened her seat belt.

“Is he okay?” I asked. I hated that I'd hurt him. How could we go on from there? How could he forgive me? It didn't seem like something you laugh about later:
Hey, son, remember that time you clocked me in the jaw. You know, the night your ex pushed Megan onto the subway tracks?

It was slipping away from me, this new life I'd created. Just the way Priss wanted it to. She liked me best when I was lonely and high, an outcast who didn't belong anywhere. She didn't want me loved and happy, building a life that didn't include her.