Inappropriate Behavior: Stories (22 page)

I would say—I know who you are.

I waited. Finally, the vintage-clothing-store lady said, “Can I help you with something, miss?”

“No,” I said. “Go away.”

The vintage-clothing-store lady said, “Excuse me?”

“Would you please go away?” I said. “You're ruining this.”

She said, “What's the problem?”

“I'm trying to have a vintage-clothing-store shopping experience here, and you're ruining it.” I turned on her. “I thought you people were famous for never helping anyone. Isn't that right? You just stand around, and then when someone comes up and buys something you charge them too much for it, and then you scoff. Isn't that right? What's the matter with you? Can't you see I'm interested in these . . .”

I turned to see where I was, then said, “Hats,” and then
I panicked because I'd taken my eye off the fitting room, and when I turned to look around the store, I knew before I saw it what I'd see. The front door to the store closing behind a man in a silver tweed overcoat, his shoulders barely visible above the racks of crap they sell in these stores. And then I tried to move quickly for the door, but the vintage-clothing-store lady grabbed my arm and said, “I demand an apology,” but I pulled free and ran for the door, knocking over a bucket of black umbrellas as I passed, then out into the street and saw, of course, nothing.

I went home and cried on my bed for an hour. I had been so close, but he'd gotten away again. I cried louder now, hoping to get my mother to come in the room and ask me what was wrong, like she always did. I screamed at the top of my lungs, but this time she never came.

14

“So,” my therapist says, “from here on out, no more screwing around. No more tricks, no more brain-picking, no more anything. Just two people talking. Deal?”

“I guess,” I say.

“So why is it that you're obsessed with David Ferrie?”

“I'm not,” I say. “I just see him around the neighborhood all the time.”

“Jill,” my therapist says, “the man is dead.”

“I see you all the time, too,” I say. “But that doesn't mean I'm obsessed with you.”

“The man is dead.”

“According to whom?” I say. “The New Orleans Police Department? The House Committee on Assassinations? You?”

“The man is dead.”

“The what . . . the . . . the damn Warren Commission?”

“The man is dead,” he says.

“The CIA?”

“Do you ever see any other people around the neighborhood?”

“You can never believe anything,” I say. “No one's ever telling the truth. Ever.”

“How about Elvis?” he says. “Lots of people see Elvis.”

“Please.”

“So you do believe that Elvis is dead,” he says.

“Please. It's not even the same thing. Of course Elvis is dead.”

“How about John Kennedy, then? If you can never be sure . . .”

“I'm pretty sure Kennedy's dead,” I say.

“What about Marilyn Monroe?”

“Don't start . . .”

“What about Lincoln? You haven't seen old Honest Abe at the pet store on Euclid, have you?”

“You jerk.”

“Why, Jill? Why am I a jerk? Because I'm tired of hearing about David Ferrie every time you walk in the door? Because I'm trying to help someone who won't be helped? Who refuses to even live in the same world as me?”

“What world is that?” I say.

“The world where when people die they stay dead.”

“But he didn't die,” I say. “That's the whole point. He's there, don't you see?”

“Jill,” my therapist says, “they found his body. They identified it. They buried him. And they did it thirty-some years ago.”

“You don't know anything about this. You haven't read the books. You don't—”

“I've read some books—”

“Some books. Do you know how many there are? Do you know how long it takes to read them all? And what a commitment it is? And the people who wrote these books—do you know the things they were up against, trying to get the truth? You don't know anything, you don't know anything about it.”

“Tell me about it,” he says.

“Don't you see?” I ask him. “Don't you understand that
you'll never know the truth? We're going to figure out how God made the universe before we figure this out. The people who set this up, you'll never know. They could release every single document, and we still wouldn't know. We could get everyone who's still alive to tell everything they know, and we still wouldn't know. You could wave a magic wand and have every fact, and you still wouldn't know it all. They killed the president of the United States of America. And no one will ever know who did it, or why. And to go around acting like you know, acting like Oswald was the only one involved, well, that's the worst, because that means you just don't care.”

“What choice is there, Jill?”

“Even all these books—they look accurate, and they are written by people who say they want to get to the truth. But maybe they're lying, too. Maybe they're part of it. I have a book that says that NASA conspired with former Nazi scientists to kill Kennedy because they knew they couldn't make it to the moon. I have a book that says the Onassis family did it. I have at least three books about men who say they were the shooter from the grassy knoll. I have a book that says that the Lee Harvey Oswald who went to Russia is not the same Lee Harvey Oswald that came back. And of course you probably know there were lots of Lee Harvey Oswalds running around Dallas and New Orleans during the weeks before the assassination.”

“Lots of Lee Harvey—”

“It's amazing. It's something they learned about us. Usually, you think of a plot, it's got to be kept quiet. Only a few people can know about it. But with this one, the more people know about it, the less we know about it. What does that say about us? Do you realize that no other nation in the history of the world would buy the lone-nut theory, and yet every time something happens to one of our leaders, it's always the work of some lone nut. The lone nut is America's contribution to political assassination. Well, again, what does that say about us? We don't live in the real world. We refuse to. We're afraid of it.”

“Do you ever see your mother around the neighborhood, Jill?”

“What did you say?”

“You see David Ferrie around the neighborhood. He's dead. I just wonder if you ever see your mother around the neighborhood?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Just wondering.”

“I'm going to say this one more time. I am not chasing ghosts around the Central West End. I do not see dead people. I see David Ferrie because he is there. He is alive.”

“What happened to your mother, Jill?”

15

David Ferrie is a master of anti-interrogation techniques. David Ferrie is fluent in Latin. David Ferrie may have been one of history's most important individuals. David Ferrie, in his youth, bowled a perfect game.

16

“What happened to your mother, Jill?”

17

David Ferrie wanted nothing more in life than to be a Roman Catholic priest. David Ferrie raised orchids. David Ferrie wrote books on motivational tactics. David Ferrie wrote over three hundred sonnets.

18

“What happened to your mother, Jill?”

19

David Ferrie was a man of apocalyptic visions. David Ferrie painted desert and coastal landscapes. David Ferrie asked for the exact weight of everyone he met. Among David Ferrie's possessions were a mini Minox camera and a microdot machine. They don't give those to just anyone.

20

“What happened to your mother, Jill?” my therapist says again and again, and suddenly, as if he's summoned her, she walks into the room. She sits down on the edge of the couch and gently strokes my ankle. My therapist ignores her, says again, like she isn't even there, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” She smiles.

At that moment the door to his office opens again, and David Ferrie walks in. My therapist ignores him, too. But it's not him, not the him I've seen on the street, but the younger him, with the crazy orange monkey wig and a Lucky in his teeth, and he says, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” And then President Kennedy walks in, he's looking good, no head wound, moving confidently, handsome, and he comes up to David Ferrie, claps him on the back, and turns toward me and says, “What, erh, happened to your mother, Jill?” and then in comes Robert Kennedy, and George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald's CIA handler, and Guy Banister, Ferrie's boss, a former FBI man, and Rose Cheramie, a New Orleans prostitute who was thrown from a moving car in Eunice, Louisiana, and told police there all about the assassination
two days before it happened
, and they all say, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” and Dorothy Kilgallen, the journalist who said she was going to break the case, who was found dead of a “drug overdose” in a Los Angeles hotel room in 1965. Then Jim Garrison and Jack Ruby and even the lone nut himself, Lee Harvey Oswald, and they're all asking me, and the room is filling up now, people even I don't know, but still my therapist hasn't
moved from his seat. There's J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ and Sam Giancana and Earl Warren, and they're happy to see each other, all glad hands and laughter, and all of them asking over and over, “What happened to your mother, Jill?” like it's the password for some big club, like it's some kind of big joke, and then I start screaming, and they're on me, grabbing and pulling my hair, and I'm fighting, but the whole time they're asking me what happened to my mother, and the thing is
she's right here
, with all of them, killing me, laughing, and just before I go out, I see my reflection in the teeth of John F. Kennedy's golden smile, and I think to myself that if I can survive this, it'll be a long time before I tell anyone my secrets again.

I
NAPPROPRIATE
B
EHAVIOR

George and Miranda Putnam have been called to another meeting at their son's school. It's hard for Miranda to get off work, but she's going to be there. For George, it's no problem, and there's a part of him that's glad for something to do. There's a part of him that's glad to have another grievance to nurse deep into the night. For Miranda, in this economy, this is all a real inconvenience.

Because what are they going to learn at this meeting that they didn't learn at the meeting earlier this school year, or the five meetings last year, or the three the year before that?

What they learn, George and Miranda, what they always learn, is that their eight-year-old son, Archie, is
continuing to struggle with impulsivity issues, focus problems, inappropriate behavior
. A teacher shows George and Miranda a plastic bag she keeps on her desk, filled with the work Archie hasn't finished.
He's simply incapable of completing his work
. No one says ADD or ADHD. George and Miranda have noted the way the teachers and counselors and the principal avoid those terms, probably because there are medical and perhaps even legal points involved.

“But there are some not-so-fine points involved in a word like
incapable
, too, aren't there?” Miranda asks George as they're driving home. The radio is talking about Goldman Sachs. Four soldiers killed in Iraq. “If he's really
incapable
. . .”

“You saw the bag,” George says. “I don't know.”

And they've had him tested, they've tried all the meds. The drugs that turn Archie into a speed freak—grinding his teeth, pulling at his hair, staring vacantly—the drugs that make him
incontinent. You've got to try to establish the proper dosage, the doctors say, but George and Miranda can't stand to have Archie on those pills.

George and Miranda and Archie have seen more doctors over the past three years than a kid with cancer would. These doctor visits, with co-pays and deductibles, run George and Miranda more than $500 a month. One night, after an especially long day with Archie, George said this:

“I just, I don't know, I just think about some kid with leukemia, and what his parents are going through, and . . . I just thank God that he's healthy.”

And boy, was that the wrong thing to say, because Miranda said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What?” George said.

“You seriously just said that, you
thank God he's healthy
?” Miranda was sitting on the bed in a long T-shirt, putting lotion on her legs. She still had a wet little pile of cream-colored goo in her left hand.

George said nothing. They'd finally got Archie to sleep, but if they raised their voices, even a little, Archie would wake up and come running down the hall. George walked to the bed and slid his slippers underneath.

“No, George, I mean it,” Miranda said. “You know what, I'm glad, too, I
thank God
, too. Because if I had to go through something like that, with you and your pious bullshit . . . You know what those parents are going through, you know how they do it? They're fucking adults is how.
Jesus
.”