KooKooLand (32 page)

All I could think was, she's never coming back. She's gonna forget all about me. Forget all about this stupid place.

And at first, it seemed like I was right.

Jimmy found out Susan was settling in pretty good. At least that's what Terry said when Jimmy brought him some of Shirley's spanakopita so he wouldn't waste away.

Like Doris, Susan had always dreamed of moving to California. She was outdoorsy and a bleeding heart, so Jimmy figured she'd fit right in. But it didn't turn out that way. California was a nightmare for Susan. Everywhere she looked she saw her mother starting over her life at forty-two, tanned as honey from all that sunshine and full of excitement.

It didn't help matters that Susan found a cheesy crime magazine at Aunt Irene's that had a story about the murders:
Man Goes for a Walk and Gets Ventilated!
The story was mostly about John Betley, about how going out for a belt of booze with a floozy had caused the poor sap to get stabbed to death. It got Susan all riled up.

All in all, KooKooLand didn't make Susan feel any less crazy.

Before long, she returned to New Hampshire.

I finally got Jimmy to take me over to Hank's store to see her. Hank's family had been running the place for him while he was locked up in the loony bin.

I left the snow globe at home. Christmas was over and I thought Jimmy would call me a dummkopf if I brought a present.

On the drive over I tried to rehearse what to talk about with Susan. Her dead mother. My Christmas presents. Hank. Nothing seemed right. When we pulled up, I still hadn't figured it out.

The shop felt strange without Hank. People weren't hanging around and throwing the baloney.

I didn't notice Susan right away. She looked different. Older. More like her mother. She didn't seem to be working. She was just standing there, looking lost.

Before I could get a word out, Jimmy began blabbing away to her.

“You look like a paleface, Injun. Didn't you get any sun out there in KooKooLand? That's all that goddamn place is good for.”

“Aunt Irene took me to Muscle Beach,” she said flatly. “But it wasn't very sunny.”

“I know Muscle Beach,” boasted Jimmy. “I was there when I was in the merchant marine, docked in San Pedro. It's just a bunch of fairies who think they're he-men. I could swab the deck with 'em without leavin' a streak.”

Susan looked away from Jimmy. I tried to catch her eye, but I seemed to be invisible to her.

“I'm going into the hospital,” she mumbled. “In Massachusetts. McLean Hospital.”

I froze. Maybe she was dying.

“McLean? That's the best goddamn joint around,” Jimmy assured her. “They'll get your head screwed on straight. Hell, after everything that's happened, I wouldn't mind goin' there myself.”

“Well, the more, the merrier,” she said.

I relaxed a bit. She was just going to a loony bin.

Jimmy lowered his voice and leaned closer to her.

“Your old man didn't know what he was doing. You know that, don't you?”

“I know,” said Susan. “I know.”

“Good,” said Jimmy. “That's good. Kids gotta respect their father no matter what. He needs you right now. Your old man needs you. You gotta be strong for him, OK? You're a tough kid. You'll bounce back. You'll be back at college before you know it, making him proud. I'm counting on you. I'm counting on you to become a doctor and find a cure for the Big C before it grabs me by the throat.”

Susan managed a weak smile.

Jimmy hugged her and we left.

The only thing I ended up saying was good-bye.

I'd wanted to tell her how sorry I was that her mother was dead. I'd wanted to say it but couldn't open my frickin' mouth. I was afraid Jimmy would yell at me for taking Doris's side.

On the way home, I asked Jimmy if we could drive down and see Susan at the loony bin. He said Susan didn't need a little pip-squeak bugging her when she was trying to get her head on straight. He said I was a dummkopf for even asking. He said he understood Susan better than I ever would 'cause he knew what it felt like to be going off your rocker and I was just a happy-go-lucky kid without a care in the world.

He pulled over just outside the projects and told me he was in a hurry and to hoof it the rest of the way home. I jumped out and he sped off.

I went home and sat in my room and chewed some Chuckles on the side of my mouth where my teeth ached the least. As I sat there, I came up with a new plan.

I'd ditch school one day and hitchhike to the loony bin. I'd find Susan in her hospital bed on the verge of dying. She'd be so glad to see me she'd perk right up. I'd feed her some Chuckles and make her laugh. I'd give her the snow globe with the two sunbathing teen-ragers and she'd say it was the best present she ever got in her whole entire life. She'd ask if we could be pen pals and I'd shout yes yes yes. She'd promise to write every day and to draw hearts and flowers all over the envelopes and to send secret messages only we could understand.

At the end of the visit, I'd steal a needle from the nurse. We'd prick each other's finger and press our fingertips together. I'd feel my blood flow into her and hers into me.

It wouldn't hurt at all.

Then I'd hitchhike home.

I'd get back before school let out and walk in the door like nothing happened.

I'd talk Virginia into forging a note for me.
Please excuse my daughter for being absent, she had a lousy toothache.
At least that part wasn't a lie.

But the more I thought about my plan the more I pictured a million things going wrong. I pictured a hot-rodder trying to pass a truckie as I was hitchhiking and running me over. I pictured freezing to death by the side of the road and being eaten by a bear. I pictured the Boston Strangler coming along and saying, Get in, little girl.

And, just like that, I knew the whole thing was a pipe dream. I was too much of a Chicken Little—
pluck pluck pluck
—to go anywhere. It was Susan who was going somewhere. Going right outta my life.

Not long after that, the snow globe sprang a leak. I picked it up one day and a drop of water plopped onto the floor. I looked closer and saw there was a tiny crack in the plastic. Before long, those teen-ragers would be high and dry. I couldn't believe it. I'd been so careful with the snow globe, watching over it like Jimmy with Victory Bound or like Shirley with Jimmy's favorite supper in the oven. I'd been careful, and still something had happened. Something I couldn't explain.

I wanted to blame somebody. Cockeyed Barney. Hopped-up Bruce. My stupid sister. Sylvester the goddamn cat. Somebody must've been in my bedroom and knocked it over and didn't tell me. I felt like murdering whoever it was. Stabbing them to death like you-know-who. But there was no one around to blame.

I was left with nothing. Nothing but being mad. Good and mad.

I stormed downstairs. I went and got a hammer from our junk drawer. The hammer had a wobbly handle but it worked good enough. I put the snow globe on the floor of my bedroom and didn't even hesitate. I brought the hammer down on it as hard as I could. It splintered like a bar of Turkish Taffy when you smacked it against a counter. A puddle of water was left on the floor looking like Sylvester had peed there.

For the first time I could see how destroying something, really smashing the living daylights out of it, could make you feel better.

I felt powerful. I felt like Popeye when he ate a can of spinach.

Like I could swab the deck with those musclemen just like Jimmy.

F
eeling good didn't last.

Feeling mad didn't go away.

I was mad when I had to go back to school after the holidays.

Mad when I turned ten and realized I'd never be a single digit again and my life was as good as over.

Mad when the birthday present I was given—a ladies' Timex from Uncle Barney—stopped ticking the very next day.

Mad when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and Jimmy made me change the channel 'cause they were a bunch of fairies.

Mad when I went to the dentist and had seventeen cavities in my Dracula teeth.

And mad—really mad—when Shirley told me they'd sold Victory Bound. Sold him to someone with lots of dough who could take better care of him. She promised we'd get another horse, but I yelled I didn't want another goddamn horse. I ran up to my bedroom and slammed the door and bawled. And every time I looked at that picture of us in the winner's circle hanging on the wall, I wanted to smash it.

I decided Jimmy had been right all along. Life wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. Look at Susan. She'd been on top of the world and now she was just trying to keep her head above water. She'd been skiing down mountains and publishing poems and on her way to being a doctor for poor kids and now she was stuck in a nuthouse.

Things didn't seem to be going Hank's way either. The judge refused to toss out the case against him even though somebody had destroyed evidence by mopping up those bloodstains. Jimmy said the judge was as blind as goddamn Helen Keller if he couldn't see that Hank was being railroaded. He talked about getting a dago from Revere to gouge the judge's eyes out so that everyone would know what a blind bastard he was.

But that didn't end up being necessary because, one by one, all those headshrinkers said Hank was mad. Not just angry mad like me, but crazy mad like
Norman Bates. The headshrinkers told the grand jury—twenty-one men and one woman—that Hank was as nutty as a fruitcake on the night of the murders and was still nuts. They said Hank had no memory of ventilating two people, but they were worried he might ventilate himself if he suddenly remembered. For Hank's own safety, he should be locked up in the nuthouse for life. Or at least until he wasn't nutty anymore.

The grand jury didn't indict Hank for murder.

“He beat the rap!” crowed Jimmy when he heard the news. “
Meep meep
, dummkopfs!”

The jury only made a ruling in the death of John Betley. They didn't even consider Doris's death. I asked Jimmy why that was and he said she wasn't worth anybody's time, she was a goddamn whore.

Hank was committed to New Hampshire Hospital on February 26, 1964, a little more than two months after the murders. He was forty-six years old.

Once again, the city was divided. Some people thought Hank had gotten away with murder. Others thought being married to Doris had been punishment enough.

Personally, I hoped he rotted in there.

I hoped Hank Piasecny was out of all of our lives forever.

I hoped we could adopt Susan.

But none of those things happened.

Still, it was a year before we saw Hank again. Jimmy, of course, wanted to visit him right away. But for the first year only family members were allowed to see him.

“They oughta make an exception for merchant mariners,” Jimmy complained. “But those pencil pushers don't know crap about the Brotherhood of Men.”

Through the grapevine Jimmy heard that Hank was holding up great and still tough as nails.

The house with the bad lawn and the disappearing bloodstains was sold and the money went to Susan and Terry. Jimmy said Terry could use the dough since he'd gone and screwed up and gotten married and had pip-squeaks instead of playing the field like Jimmy always told him to do.

Susan got out of the fancy nuthouse near Boston. She returned to New Hampshire and began working at a medical lab. She visited Hank all the time. She forgave him for murdering her mother because she'd been raised a good Catholic and she believed in forgiveness.

In 1965, about a year after Hank was committed to the hospital, he was
moved to an area where he could mingle with the other patients. He quickly became top dog in the place. Before long, he had the other patients waiting on him hand and foot.

He kept in good shape playing pitch-and-putt golf. Sometimes Susan played with him, but she was always careful to let him do better than her.

Finally, anybody could visit Hank. At first, the hospital had a hard time handling all the people who wanted to see him. They ended up forcing people to make appointments.

One Sunday, Jimmy loaded us all into the Pontiac and drove to the nuthouse.

On the outside, the place didn't seem scary at all. It looked like what I imagined a college would look like: stately old brick buildings on a big lawn with leafy trees and picnic tables. It seemed peaceful and a whole lot nicer than the projects.

I noticed the name of the street the place was on. Pleasant Street.

“Hank was on easy street, now he's on Pleasant Street, poor bastard,” said Jimmy as we headed inside.

At the front desk, Jimmy tried to joke around with the woman who was checking us in.

“You've heard of the Mad Monk, Rasputin? Well, we're here to see the Mad Polack Piasecny,” he said, laughing.

The old bat glared at him.

“We don't use words like that around here.”

“Oh yeah? Which word?
Mad?
Or
Polack
?” He said the words louder to get a rise out of her.

The woman didn't answer. She just sent someone to find Hank.

While we waited, I checked out the other nutcases, wondering how many of them had killed people. Some of them looked pretty kookoo. I was sure Hank would look kookoo too after killing two people. I pictured his eyeballs spinning like pinwheels and his mouth drooling like a Saint Bernard's. But when he showed up he looked the same. Maybe a little happier.

Maybe he was just happy to see us.

“Give your Uncle Hank a kiss,” Jimmy ordered Virginia and me.

It ticked me off that Hank, who had never before been called my uncle, was now related to me after ventilating two people, but I forced myself to peck his sandpapery cheek.

Virginia kissed the air near his kisser.