KooKooLand (42 page)

I said no thanks, maybe another time.

Still, I tried to fit in. I took a beginning music class.

The first day we were told to compose something.

Here's what I knew about music up to that point:

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do.

The professor assured me anyone could compose music. A baby composes when it cries, he said. Music is just sound, and sound is all around.

My fellow classmates didn't seem daunted by the assignment. One kid composed a piece that consisted of him dragging his chair across the floor, making scraping sounds.

The only sound I made in that class was
click
. The sound of the door closing as I transferred the hell out of there.

After that I decided to stick with what I knew, literature and science.

I vowed to go to medical school—and, unlike Susan, to make it through.

I got a job selling my body—in an art class, not at a massage parlor. I posed naked while rich kids in paint-spattered overalls that made them look poor created facsimiles of my tits. I was a virgin and had never been naked in front of strangers, but I was used to imagining myself elsewhere—in somebody else's car or house or city—so that's what I did. I pretended I was in a bikini on a beach in KooKooLand instead of stark naked and covered with goose bumps in Vermont.

I needed more money, so I got more jobs—washing peanut butter tofu off dishes in the cafeteria and assisting a writing teacher. The money I made paid for cancer sticks and thrift shop clothes. I wore cocktail dresses and antique underwear, men's baggy suits and a coat made of monkey fur.

I wasn't the weirdest dresser on campus.

Slowly, I made a few friends, including the cute guy with glasses who played his Moog synthesizers for me.

But sadness kept dragging me down.

I started seeing a campus shrink. It was free, and besides, all the kids at Bennington seemed to have one. One girl's shrink came all the way from New York to see her. And he always spent the night in her room.

But my headshrinker didn't help very much. It wasn't her fault. I was too ashamed to tell her what was really going on. Too ashamed to tell her the real story about my family. I couldn't even bring myself to spill the beans about what Jimmy really did. I said nothing about pancakes, hot TVs, or juiced-up
nags. I kept all that on a stone wall. I told the shrink Jimmy was a landscape architect. I'd never even known such a job existed until a girl in my dorm asked what my father did after telling me hers worked on stupid Wall Street. I got all tongue-tied and mumbled something about landscaping. “Oh, he's a landscape architect,” she said, like she knew him better than I did. From then on, that was my story. Jimmy Norris the con artist became Jimmy Norris the landscape architect.

After a few weeks, I stopped seeing the shrink altogether. I didn't feel much like going to classes either. I stayed in bed and smoked cigarettes. I didn't even eat the baklava that kept arriving from Shirley.

You'll never fit in here, I told myself.
Nevernevernever
.

There were just too many things I didn't know. Too many references I didn't get. Too many jokes that went over my head. Jokes I wouldn't have laughed at anyway 'cause I was too afraid to show my Dracula teeth.

Finally, I'd had my fill of feeling like a dummkopf. I was on the verge of packing up and leaving Bennington.

And then Jimmy showed up.

“What the hell're you doing, dum-dum?” he barked, after throwing open the door and finding me sleeping in the middle of the day.

“Daddy?” I said, groggily.

“I thought I'd come get a look at this clip joint,” he joked. “Maybe I wanna go here myself.”

He had stopped off on his way home from a nearby racetrack. He was hoping to get back into the racing game and had gone there to check out a couple of nags.

I looked down and saw horse manure on his worn-out shoes.

Those shitty shoes just broke my heart. I burst out crying.

Jimmy looked startled. He watched me blubbering for a moment, then yanked the door shut.

“What the hell's the matter with you? You're in the lap of luxury here and you're bawling like a brat. You could be out hustling for a goddamn living like me.”

“I can't make it here, I can't,” I blubbered. “I wanna leave.”

Jimmy's eyes narrowed. He stormed over to the bed. I cringed. I didn't know what he was going to do.

But he just sat down on the bed next to me and lit a cancer stick. He stared at my overflowing ashtray on the floor.

“It's a goddamn lousy habit,” he said. “You oughta quit.”

“What difference does it make? We all die anyway,” I blurted out between sobs.

He glared at me. Then he reached out and grabbed my arm with his Hairy Claw.

“Look, no kid of mine goes down in the first round, you hear me? You're as goddamn good as any of these tight-assed little rich kids. Hell, you're better. You got something they'll never have. You got street smarts. You got moxie. You got balls, OK? Even though you're a goddamn girl. So sit your ass up, go out and get some goddamn Greek penicillin, and show those sons-of-bitches what you're made of.”

I blubbered a little more and then sat my ass up.

Jimmy didn't hang around much longer.

He went home.

But I stayed.

I dug in my heels. I studied hard. I tried to stay focused on where I was, not where I'd been.

I was grateful to Jimmy for showing up when he did. Grateful for the father-daughter lecture.

I even missed him a little.

Like always, though, my good feelings toward him didn't last.

When I called home a few weeks later, Jimmy was out and Shirley sounded awful. I could tell she had been crying.

“What happened? Did he go nuts again?”

“I'm just going through the change of life,” she lied. “It's nothing. I'm just a little blue.”

“I'm coming home! I'll get a bus in the morning.”

I was lying too. I was already planning to hitchhike to save money.

“No! You stay there! You got away, you stay away!”

She said she was feeling better already from hearing from me and I should go and have fun.

“I live through you,” she said before she blew me kisses and hung up.

Once again I found myself thinking about Susan. About how she must've felt when her college dean showed up and told her that her mother had died. I wondered if she'd been lounging in the library or laughing with friends or blissfully asleep. I wondered if she blamed herself for going off and leaving her mother at the mercy of a father who showed her no mercy.

The next day I hitchhiked into town. It had gotten bitterly cold and I pictured myself stranded on the border between Vermont and New Hampshire
in my monkey fur coat that was bald in spots and not very warm. I bought a carton of cancer sticks 'cause it was cheaper to buy them that way, and smoked a few 'cause that was the only thing that seemed to calm me down.

I told myself Shirley was probably OK.

I told myself Jimmy wasn't as crazy as Hank.

I told myself Shirley was probably OK a bunch more times.

Finally, I crossed to the other side of road and stuck out my thumb.

I headed back to campus.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because she chickened out.

Pluck pluck pluck.

I didn't have balls after all. I didn't have the balls to save my own sweet mother 'cause I was a weak, stupid, selfish teen-rager.

I could hear Jimmy's voice in my head telling me that. I could hear him in my goddamn head all the goddamn time. I wished I could get him the hell out. I wished somebody would lobotomize me like that guy in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
—a book that Jimmy—who else?—had told me to read.

Sign me up for a Jimmy lobotomy.

So what if it made me a dummkopf?

I
didn't end up returning home until right before Christmas. I hitchhiked there and had no trouble getting rides 'cause old codgers always picked up eighteen-year-old girls. I carried a pair of scissors in case any of the codgers got fresh, but I was a lucky so-and-so and none of them did. I had the last guy drop me off near the projects and walked the rest of the way, lugging my suitcase. It was only about four thirty, but it was already pretty dark. I trudged along those familiar streets that didn't look so familiar anymore. Strings of half-lit Christmas bulbs drooped around iced-up windows and didn't make me feel merry. I was afraid of finding Jimmy half-lit himself. But, when I got closer to our apartment, I was relieved to see Jimmy's car wasn't even there. I walked up the icy, muddy path to the front door, took a deep breath, and walked inside. Shirley raced over to greet me. She'd put on a pretty new dress for my homecoming and a little face paint but not too much. None of that could disguise the fact that she looked exhausted. When I hugged her she felt thin and as fragile as phyllo dough.

“This place must look small after living in such grand style,” she said, embarrassed.

“My dorm room is tiny,” I assured her. “And this place looks great. I love those new curtains.”

I could tell she'd gone all out decorating, shopping, and baking, even more than usual.

“I got 'em at the secondhand store. I get everything there now. Except your presents. Those are brand spankin' new. Don't tell your father, though.”

“How's he been? He's always crappy around Christmas.”

“Oh, he treats me good now. Go see how I fixed up your room.”

I walked upstairs to my old bedroom, carrying my suitcase.

When I got to the top of the stairs I saw them.

Two bullet holes in the ceiling.

I dropped my suitcase. It went tumbling back down the stairs, splitting open and spilling its contents.

“What happened?” I screamed, running down the stairs, trampling on my stuff.

Shirley already had her story worked out.

“The gun went off by accident.”

“You're covering for him!”

“No, he was horsing around. Just trying to scare me.”

“This is it! You have to leave!”

“It was my fault. I opened my big mouth.”

“Next time he'll kill you!”

“He'll kill me if I try to leave. Doris learned that the hard way. This is my cross to bear. Now, let's just try and have a nice Christmas.”

I knew right then and there, I couldn't save her. I couldn't beat him. He was bigger, stronger, faster, meaner. He could charm a bird off a tree. And if not, he could shoot it off.

I repacked my suitcase and lugged it back upstairs. I felt empty inside. I saw my room had bright new curtains and matching rainbow bedspreads on the bunk beds.

I went to the bathroom and peed. As I sat on the toilet, I noticed a hunk of the bathroom door had been kicked out and superglued back in.

“I was stupid and locked myself in,” Shirley explained when I went back downstairs and asked her about it. “Your father had to rescue me. I don't know what I would've done if he hadn't been here.”

She needed to lie—to herself even more than to me. It was the only way she could keep going.

“How long were you stuck in there?” I asked, resigned to playing along.

“Oh, not too long. Anyway, it's in the past. It's all in the past.”

We let it go. It was Christmas. Hark! Jimmy was the savior.

A short while later, the Savior came home from hunting. He'd bagged a Christmas goose and a trunkful of ducks. He'd outwitted the wardens once more and was jubilant.

“The prodigal daughter is home,” he said, aiming his rifle at me. Ha ha. Just horsing around.

The next day, Shirley cooked his goose. Ha ha. If only.

I wasn't hungry, but I put on a good face, and goddamn, if that goose wasn't delicious.

I asked for seconds.

Jimmy took off to go hunting again, and it was the best Christmas gift he could have given us.

Virginia came over with Dustin and we opened some presents. Shirley gave Dustin lots of toys and said how nice it was to have a kid in the house again for Christmas.

Virginia told me she'd met a new guy at the massage parlor. He was married but he treated her like a queen.

We all had to make the best of things.

I knew I had to. I was going to be living there for three long months. Classes didn't start up again until March. During the winter, Bennington students were required to go off and get Life Experience. They were encouraged to pursue whatever arty thing caught their fancy. It was a total blast for the kids who studied mime with Marcel Marceau in Paris or worked for the
New York Times
in Cairo or photographed sea turtles in the Galápagos.

For me, it was pretty frickin' terrible.

I had to move back in with Jimmy and go back to wiping pip-squeaks' noses at the day care center I'd worked at the summer before.

At first, it wasn't so bad. Jimmy was off hunting a lot—sometimes alone, sometimes with Hank. The track was closed for the winter, so he didn't have to collect horse pee in the spit box for a while. In the meantime, he was making dough selling Percodans he had snowed his doctor pals into giving him for his bad back neck elbow wrist you-name-it. He was also selling Percodans that those same docs were prescribing to Shirley for her bad back neck elbow wrist you-name-it after Jimmy had coached her how to describe the ailment convincingly.

I tried to ignore the drug dealing and did my best not to get on Jimmy's bad side. I dressed like a Greek crone and learned from YaYa how to make baklava that Jimmy gobbled down and deemed “not too terrible.”

I went food shopping with Jimmy—a day-long affair. We drove a half hour to a market owned by a Greek 'cause the prices were cheaper and 'cause Greeks had to stick together. We drove to a meat market where the butcher would let Jimmy go in the back and cut up his own lamb. We drove to a farm that had eggs that had just dropped out of a chicken's Shame.