What Happened to Lani Garver (24 page)

"The costume is not exactly ... sexy or anything. But it came from The Cloisters. It's a really expensive store, where Abby's mom is a buyer..." He trailed off.

I pinched my tired eyes. "A ladies' dress store, I take it."

"Worse."

I couldn't imagine. I pinched my eyelids.

"It's a lady's lingerie store. Abby made the costume by layering three nightgowns."

I collapsed over sideways on the concrete. He sat there so quietly, and I finally spouted, "May I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure."

"Did you ...
enjoy
dressing up in that costume?"

I could hear him breathing at the other end, then, "Why is that important?"

I felt tired of being shoved around this morning. "Because I
said
it is."

"Will you agree to go to Erdman if we talk about this?"

"
No.
But if you don't tell me, I will hang up and not help you."

He sighed a few times, in a girly way that made me want to reach through the phone and slap him. "Okay. Fine. I don't mind saying the truth.
Yes.
I liked dressing up in that costume. Not entirely because it was an angel costume, although I liked acting that part. I also like how that costume feels, yeah."

"And you ... want ...
me
... to go see Erdman." I could feel my zombie eyeballs bugging, and my laugh rang through the courtyard. "What is happening with my life?
I
should see a shrink?"

He sighed more, though it was pretty well buried in my laughs. "Claire, I can only apologize. Same as I've apologized to my parents, to more than one stupid school board, to my dad's friends, to that priest, to my friends of the past. I'm sorry I don't mind girl things. I'm sorry I don't stomp and hate Barbie and fart and scratch. I'm sorry I never told a makeup girl backstage at our plays to back off from my macho self. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But that's not going to change what's actually what."

I sat up, ogling between my spread-out legs at the
WELCOME
on Suhar's mat. "You, my friends, my dad ... you're all
making
me crazy."

"I'm sorry."

I picked at the
WELCOME
embroidery.
Welcome to Claire's Nuthouse.
"If you don't mind, forget everything I said on the bus last night about you being ... you know—"

"A floating angel."

"Yeah. It's all part of my problem. I'm ... what is it called in that Jung workbook ...
legally insane.
Thank you very much."

"I'm sorry."

"But I'm not going to any shrink.
All
of you down on Hackett can set up a group appointment for yourselves. And while you're at it, will you take my mom?"

"I'm really sorry."

His chronic apologies bored me to death. Some stray, normal thought rushed through my head. Probably because I was bored. "Sydney, my boss, is ...
sane.
She's a retired attorney from Philadelphia, making a fortune off brainiacs who had never seen a gelato before she showed up. She can see your house from the café,
and,
since she finds us island people so amusing, she watches my friends like a hawk. Maybe she saw something. Go find out. Or maybe your mom's lying to you. She thinks you're a pervert, anyway. Maybe she got curious, opened the box, and threw the nightgowns out."

He picked up on that train of thought, like maybe this conversation about my sanity had not just taken place. "My mom swears she didn't touch it, and I believe her because she had been food shopping and had all these bags of groceries to bring in. I'm afraid to question her much further for fear she'll get suspicious that something really perverted was in that package."

"Tell her it was a school-play costume!"

"I haven't even told her yet I was in school last year."

And
my
life needs head shrinkage?

"Angel costume, wow. That's way perverse." I laughed in that way when you're laughing but not smiling. And I couldn't figure out what I was laughing at, so I laughed some more. "I'm not seeing any shrink, Lani."

"Okay."

"Hi ... Lee Erdman. Nice to meet you." He motioned at a chair in front of his desk, which I just glanced at on my way past. I walked around, studying the musical instruments he had hanging all over his wall. Saxophone, clarinet, four guitars, ukulele, something that looked like an oversized violin.

The voice behind me went off. "How are you doing, doc?"

"I'm fine, Ellen. But do you people need to be in here right now?"

A shadow crossed the corner of my eye as my dad left. Ellen spoke up. "Claire called me about something else. But now she wants me to stay. She's ... afraid of you."

"Why are you afraid of me, Claire?"

I ignored them, wishing Erdman's very clean Fender was my basement-encrusted Silo. I brushed my pinky across the strings. When nothing but those few
boinks
broke the silence, I felt the need to fill in.

"You're gonna turn my brain into ... espresso."

A laugh snorted out Ellen's nose. I decided,
She's probably one of those Hindu city-people vegetarians who drinks lima
bean espresso.
"You're gonna turn my brain into ... a fucking
scone
or some city-people shit, and look at my body right now."

I whipped back my bangs, ripped the Band-Aid off my forehead, threw it in his wastebasket, made a fist with my scabby knuckles, and decided against unzipping my jeans. "I've got a bruise on my hip that looks like a bomb exploded and a better one on my ankle. I've had no sleep. I just ate a bagel with some strange orange
fish
on it, compliments of my stepmom, and before that, she tried to serve me dog doo in a coffee mug ... a
coffee
mug, that came with a fucking
saucer!
Where do you people get off ... giving me dog doo in a mug that comes with a saucer? I'm not
crazy.
I have been
poisoned.
My body is a mess. I had cancer once ... My mind is the only thing I have left. And
you people
... can leave it ...
alone.
"

It sounded like somebody else. I felt like somebody else. Everyone in the world was betraying me, and I had never had any problem with anyone before in my life. Erdman picked up a pen and started writing when I said "cancer." He asked, "What kind of cancer? And why don't you come sit down now?"

I glanced in awe at Ellen, who had collapsed on his floor in a complete laughing fit over my speech. She was slapping the floor with her bony fingers. I backed away a couple of steps and almost banged into a bass guitar hanging on the wall. I turned around to look at it.

"Acute juvenile leukemia." I had always wanted to touch a bass. I ran my fingers across the strings, so thick and sturdy that no sound came out. "You play all these?"

"Just the sax and the guitar."

I glanced over the rest of them. "Wanna-be, huh?"

"You could say that. A lot of my clientele comes from the University of the Arts. It sparked a tradition of giving me gifts when more expensive replacements come in."

I wondered if that was supposed to impress me, the fact that he had been given gifts by patients. My watch said twelve-thirty, and I wondered how long until I could sleep.

"But I understand your father's a real musician."

Since it wasn't put as a question, I didn't answer.

"You can hold one. Feel free."

He also had a twelve-string hanging on the wall, something else I had always wanted to try to play, so I pulled it down. It wasn't until I finally spilled my butt into the chair, cradling the instrument, that I realized he'd used the guitar to trick me into sitting.
He probably has those instruments hanging up there so he can trick people.
I glanced at Ellen, who had recovered from her seizure and was barely chuckling, lying on his couch.
Better her lying there than me.

I sighed. "Promise you won't hypnotize me ... or some strange shit..."

"Okay. Can you tell me why you're here?"

"She's EDO, doc. God, that
scone
thing was classic." Ellen blasted a laugh, and Erdman waved her down to shut up.

"I'm EDO? Whatever. I don't know what I am..."

Do re me fa so la ti do-o-o-o ... ti la so fa me re do.
Playing the twelve-string was just like playing a six-string...
do me re fa me so fa la fa la fa la-a-a-a-a-a-a ti do...
only you hit two strings at once.

"I know this much. I'm more sane than my friends from Hackett."

"Okay. How's that?"

I sighed.
Ti la so fa me re do.
"Do you know what a
convenient recollection
is?"

"Sure."

I still felt very wound up. But I figured I'd better talk about something or he would hypnotize me or drug me or predict my future. It helped, telling this story about Lani versus the Rod 'N' Reel, while playing the background bars to "The Wind," a very mellow, very old Cat Stevens song. By the time I got to the part in the story where I saw
CLEMENTI
,
JOSEPHINE
on caller ID, I was talking to Erdman in a fairly normal voice, thanks to the soothing music. They had listened quietly throughout.

"So ... my girlfriend Macy, she totally believes she heard Lani in front of the Rod 'N' Reel asking some guy for sex because the guy blew smoke rings. Which is so incredibly ... out there ... Do you
know
Lani?"

I heard Ellen snort and turned to look, despite Erdman glaring at her for interrupting. She continued, "Lani brought me and, like, three other people from my high school into this office because our lives were messed up. He knows Dr. Erdman. He's so about ... helping people."

"Can you imagine him slutting? Propositioning somebody?"

She cracked up. "Seriously, this one time last year? I had to explain to him what this really meant." She flipped the bird. "He didn't know it had to do with sex."

I shook my head behind more Cat Stevens. "And people call me dense."

"People see and hear 'edited' versions of things all the time." Erdman watched me. "Something happens a certain way, and it doesn't meet what they feel could be reality, and so they 'edit' what happened."

I clapped my fingers across the guitar neck, deadening the pretty echo. "But you don't understand about Macy. She's ... So. Incredibly. Sharp. We call her hawk eye. But she's also hawk ear, hawk sniffer; she's almost psychic. She can smell BO on a kid from six aisles over. I can't even smell it when the person is right beside me."

"How do you know the kid actually smells? How do you know you're wrong and she's right?"

"Because. Everyone can smell it. After a couple weeks, everyone is talking about it. Except me. Stuff like that."

He raised his eyebrows, watching me like there was something I was missing.

I shot my head back, staring at the ceiling....
ti la so fa me
re do...
"And don't try to tell me all those people are hallucinating."

He shook his head. "Not all of them. Some of them are just ... making it sound good. To fit in."

"They're
lying?
They don't really smell anything, but they're saying a kid smells?"

"Sure."

I thought that was a way mean thing to accuse people of.
Ti la so fa me re do...
"I don't believe that. What about the poor kid who doesn't have friends and can't figure out why not?"

"Claire, if we're talking about Lani—" Ellen giggled. "You're pretty naive yourself."

I mumbled around Cat Stevens, "I missed most of junior high school because I was sick. Is that where people, like, learn to be treacherous?"

"Have you ever heard the story about the emperor's new clothes?" Erdman asked.

"That story about the guy walking the streets in his underwear?"

He kept watching me. With a couple more pretty measures, some hazy memory flashed ... people all pretended the emperor was wearing stuff—so they could fit in with the alleged cool people ... Except the town idiot.

"Wait." I slapped my hand across the neck of the guitar again. Cat Stevens did not belong with these indigestion thoughts. "I'm dying here. You're telling me that my best friend, whom I trust with my life, makes this stuff up and totally believes herself, and my other friends just lie to be like her, or they totally believe themselves, too—"

Ellen cracked up again, and this time Erdman threw a pencil in her general direction.

I cast her an evil glance. "I'm sorry, I don't think that's funny. I'm not trying to be funny. I'm trying to be very serious here, so even if it sounds funny, please don't laugh when I ask. You're saying that ... I cannot trust the things my own friends say."

I was met with silence, though I could sense Ellen holding her nose to keep from laughing.

"I just don't believe that. Sorry. I refuse to believe Larry Boogers is really just Larry Ivanosky, who looks like the
type
who would pick his boogers."

Erdman watched me.
Ti la so fa me re do ... ti la so fa me re do...

"But, Jesus. Who wants to tangle with Macy?" I rested my elbows on the guitar. "Okay, even if your little theory is true, it's not worth hating Macy over. This girl loves me. You would not believe how great this girl is to me."

"Why do you think she loves you?"

"I have no clue."
Ti la so fa me re do...
"It came out of nowhere last fall."

"It probably didn't come out of nowhere. Lots of times opposites attract."

Ti la so fa me re do ... ti la so fa me re do...
It was possible he was saying that he thought Macy liked how I rarely got sucked into her interesting observations about people—beyond looking where she pointed and laughing it off. But I was tired of thinking about all of this.

"I'm done. That's all I have to say."

"Still got a lot of time."

"I wanna sleep."

I started to get up, and he said, "Play something. You ever write anything?"

My eyes went from the guitar slowly up to his.
Who the hell knows what Lani told him ... probably wants to psychoanalyze my razor-blade music.
"Don't pull that on me. I wouldn't play the stuff I write for my worst enemy. God. I don't hate anybody that bad."