Cross Dressing (2 page)

When they got older, Dan and Michael came to understand that their mother’s behavior wasn’t normal and they got her to a doctor for diagnosis. Actually, they went to several doctors, each of whom diagnosed Ruth differently. The first doctor said she was a bipolar III. The second doctor said she was bipolar I. The third said bipolar II. This wasn’t an exact science, they said. And although the diagnoses were technically different, they were close enough to help Ruth deal with her problem.

She was on lithium for a while, but since it was less effective on patients who were “rapid cycling”—as Ruth had been recently—the doctor had switched her to divalproex, which worked fine, as long as she took it.

“Well, then increase her divalproex,” Dan said to the nurse. He looked nervously at the balance of his checking account.
Damn good thing I’ve got two jobs.
He needed the double income to afford his excessive lifestyle and to keep his mom at the nursing home and on psychotropics.
It always comes down to money.

“She doesn’t need a dosage increase,” the nurse said. “She just needs to take what we give her. She doesn’t always do
that.” The nurse’s tone was meant to imply that if Dan didn’t like the way they were taking care of his mom, then Dan could just take her home with him and see for himself how difficult she could be.

Single City Stiff stood a few feet away in his stained jacket. He had a firm grip on Ruth’s arm. She was wiggling like a big piece of gray-haired bait. Ruth was in her mid-sixties, though she looked older. Her minxy looks, once a warning to fainthearted men, were now losing the battle with age. She had silvery blue eyes, wiry and mischievous as her slim build. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Ruth said. “I was just having some fun. Why can’t I stay with you?”

Dan kept writing the check. “Mom, you know I love you,” he said. “But I’m not a baby-sitter. And if you’ll recall, I missed an important presentation that time the cops found you jogging up Sunset Boulevard.”

Ruth was defiant. “I was getting my exercise. Doctor’s orders.”

“You were buck naked,” Dan said.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” Ruth smiled blissfully, then turned on the guilt. “Michael would take care of me.”

Dan stopped writing and looked directly at his mother. “Yes, but he’s not here, is he?” Dan didn’t bother to hide his bitterness. His identical twin had skipped the country, sticking Dan with their mom, both financially and emotionally. Dan ripped the check from the register and handed it to the nurse.

Single City Stiff turned to take Ruth away. “Better put some ice on that bad ankle,” he said over his shoulder.

The nurse looked at Dan’s check. “I’m sorry, Mr. Steele, it’s four thousand a month now.”

T
he woman sitting across from the loan officer had a habit. In fact, she had two or three habits, which isn’t unusual for a
nun; they get dirty, after all, and they need to be cleaned now and again—the habits, that is, not the nuns. While most nuns had stopped wearing the traditional habit of their order, opting instead for the “dress of the day” protocol, Sister Peg still wore hers, especially when she was dealing with the bank. She hoped it would give her an edge, playing on the romantic notions most people had about nuns.

In the old days, a nun’s habit was such a distinct uniform that a knowledgeable bishop could tell from a hundred yards whether a sister was with the Congregation of the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration or was one of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. You wouldn’t confuse one for the other any more than you might confuse a baseball uniform with a hockey outfit.

Sister Peg’s habit was unique. It had a little Sister of Mercy in the pleats, some Carmelite in the yoke and gathering, and the floating sleeves of the White Sisters of Cardinal Lavigeri. The outfit conveyed piety, devotion, and resolve. While one might be unable to determine the exact order to which Sister Peg belonged, it was obvious she was a nun, or more precisely, a sister, since, strictly speaking, nuns took solemn vows and were usually cloistered while sisters were free to wear blue jeans and go to Starbucks.

Sister Peg’s face, peeking out from the headdress which was one part Little Sisters of the Poor and two parts Reformed Cistercians of La Trappe, was sweet and soft. She was in her late twenties or early thirties. It was hard to tell for certain, given that her habit revealed only her hands and face, but Sister Peg might have been quite pretty underneath the whole thing.

But none of that mattered to Mr. Larry Sturholm. He had business to take care of, and the business at hand was the delinquent mortgage with Sister Peg’s name on it. Larry was sitting behind his flimsy little associate’s desk on the floor of
his branch bank in a dull pocket of the San Fernando Valley. He was thin, befitting his modest income, and his shirt collar was loose around his chicken neck. His dark eyes seemed a size too large for their sockets. They looked as if they might pop out at any moment.

Sister Peg sat across from Larry worrying her rosary as he flipped through her loan file. Finally he looked up from the documents. “I’m sorry, Sister, what was your question again?” He seemed quite good-natured.

“Well,” Sister Peg began, “the last person I spoke with here, a Mrs. Barclay, said that since I’d shown good faith by paying what I could, she wouldn’t put us in default on the mortgage. But then we got this foreclosure notice, so here I am.” She smiled meekly and continued her silent prayers.

“Us?” Mr. Sturholm said, his brow knitting in confusion. He scanned the documents again. “I don’t understand who you mean by ‘us.’ Yours is the only name I see.” He turned the file around so Sister Peg could see it.

“Well, yes, technically, I would be the one in default,” Sister Peg said. “By ‘us’ I simply meant the people at the Care Center. The people I take care of.”

“Oh, of course,” he chuckled.
“That
kind of ‘us.’ I thought you meant ‘us’ like there might be someone else who could make the payments.” He looked at something on one of the documents, then looked up at Sister Peg. “Sister, what exactly is your affiliation with the Catholic Church?”

Sister Peg looked startled. “What do you mean? I’m a nun.” She said it as though that was all anyone needed to know.

“I was just wondering if I should talk to someone at the diocese about these payments. Are you like an employee?” He flipped through several documents looking for something, then smiled and looked up. “You know, I went to Catholic school through tenth grade, the good old Sisters of Mercy, right?”

Sister Peg smiled anxiously and nodded without making eye contact.

Larry gestured at her. “I can see you’re not one of them, right? I mean I can tell by your habit, unless they’ve changed. It’s been a while since tenth grade.” He rolled his eyes, then looked back at the file folder. “What order are you?”

Sister Peg dropped her hands into her lap and tried not to look exasperated. She wondered why this sort of thing was so important to people. “Mr. Sturholm. It’s not important what order of nun I am. What’s important is keeping the Care Center afloat.”

Larry shrugged. She certainly acted like a nun, he thought. He flipped through a few more pages of the contract, studied a few clauses, then pointed at one of them. “Ahhhh, here we go,” he said. “Now I see what the problem is.” He shook his head ruefully, as though it were a common mistake.

Sister Peg was relieved. “Wonderful,” she said. “I knew it was just some sort of mix-up. I know how those things can happen.” She moved to the next bead on her rosary.

“The problem was Mrs. Barclay,” Larry said. “She was terminated two months ago and I inherited her loan portfolio.” He gestured at a tall stack of loan files on one corner of his desk.

“They fired her?” Sister Peg asked. “But she was so helpful.”

“Well, yes,” Larry said, sadly. “I understand she was quite friendly.” He folded his hands on his desk. “Believe me, Sister, I wish we could just give our money away. But, well, I’m sure you understand.” Larry smiled at Sister Peg. “I wish there was something I could do, Sister, honestly. But my job is to bring all delinquent loans current.” Mr. Sturholm held his hands up as if to say there was nothing he could do. “I know it won’t be easy, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He smiled again. “What’s the old saying, the Lord works in mysterious ways?” He closed the file and put it in the “delinquent” box.

This wasn’t the reply for which Sister Peg had been praying so hard. If she didn’t get an extension or if she couldn’t get Mr. Sturholm to lose the paperwork for a little while, she was going to lose the Care Center. And if that happened, a lot of helpless people would be tossed onto the street. The problem with that was that Sister Peg had made it her life’s work to take care of these people. Every time she took someone in, Sister Peg made a personal vow—a promise that no matter what happened, she would take care of them. It was a promise she took very seriously.

The Care Center was a large old house in a poor neighborhood in Sylmar, a few miles northeast of the old San Fernando Mission. Sister Peg had been running the place for years. She and a few volunteers did what they could to take care of all those who slipped between the cracks of what few government programs were left to help the poor. The Care Center was licensed by the County Department of Health Services as an in-home congregate care facility. They took in abandoned and abused children, drug addicts, abused elderly, prostitutes and gang members trying to get out of the life, and anyone else they could help.

In regard to the delinquent mortgage, the main problem was that Larry Sturholm was right. No matter how hard she tried, Sister Peg had been unable to keep up the payments. Over the past eight years, Sister Peg and others like her had seen their caseloads quadruple. Upon learning there was little profit margin in helping the poor, the private sector had failed to respond the way Republicans had suggested it would. And, in part because of declining attendance, the Church was going through some belt tightening of its own and wasn’t providing as much financial help as it once had. Regardless of the reasons, Sister Peg was now three months behind on the mortgage, and she and the rest of the Care Center residents were looking at being thrown out of their home in just over thirty days.

Mr. Sturholm stood to indicate that the meeting was over. “Well, good luck, Sister,” he said. “I tell you what, I’ll keep my eyes open for a cheap rental property for you.”

Sister Peg turned to leave. She was disheartened, certainly, but not defeated. She took a few tentative steps toward the door.

“Oh, just a second, Sister.” She paused, hoping that Mr. Sturholm had suddenly thought of a solution. When she turned around, she saw that Mr. Sturholm was holding his hand out toward her. “Here,” he said. “Have a free calendar.”

S
cott Emmons was sitting across the desk from the head of Human Resources suffering his annual job performance evaluation. There was so much acid in Scott’s stomach that he couldn’t spell relief with all the letters in the alphabet. Scott was a forty-three-year-old second-string copywriter who had never been able to rely on his looks to get anywhere in life. He was slight and pasty, the result of an aversion to exercise and too many years under fluorescent lights. Making matters worse, Scott had gone with the ill-conceived hairstyle strategy that was the home-perm kit. With his thinning brown tuft agonized into feeble curls, Scott looked like a malnourished, middle-aged Jody from
Family Affair.

Leslie Zimmer was the head of Human Resources. She was young and perky and had all the confidence that came with a brand-new M.B.A. “Scott, it comes down to this,” she said. “You’ve been with The Prescott Agency for how long?”

“About ten years.”

“And how many Clios have you won?”

Scott shrugged a zero.

“Effies?”

Scott shook his head.

“Addys?”

“I got short-listed for a nomination for my flea-collar campaign.”

Leslie looked at Scott’s file. “That was … when?”

“Eight years ago.”

“Uh huh.” Leslie made a note of that.

Scott had been in advertising all of his professional life and he had a great deal of nothing to show for it. Other than the flea-collar campaign, Scott’s only claim to fame was a tag line he wrote that became a catchphrase in a small Midwest market for a couple of weeks. All he got in return was twenty-nine thousand a year and a crummy benefit package, neither of which went very far in L.A. Understandably, Scott had been hoping for a raise after this evaluation, but Leslie didn’t seem to be heading in that direction.

“What are you working on now?”

Scott perked up. “A regional radio ad for a new panty liner,” he said. “It’s pretty good.”

Leslie seemed unimpressed. “Scott, here’s the deal. You need to come up with something. Bring in a new client, come up with a new campaign for an existing client, anything. Otherwise I’m afraid we’ll have to give you notice. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Scott couldn’t believe it. They were going to fire him? His breathing became shallow. If he stopped getting a regular paycheck, he’d be eaten alive by the “minimum amount due” payments on his credit cards. Scott knew he’d never get hired by another agency, not with his meager track record. If he got reduced to unemployment checks, Scott would have to move back in with his father, a fate worse than death. At least when you’re dead, your father can’t harp on what a loser you are. Scott wanted to ask Leslie how the hell he was supposed to win awards when he never got to work with anything better than flea collars and panty liners, but he lacked the courage to ask such a question.

Leslie looked across the desk. She felt sorry for Scott, and not just because of his hair. “I tell you what,” she said. “Mr. Prescott has called a meeting about a new client. I’ll see that you can be there, but you’ve got to come up with something,” Leslie said. “Or else.”

D
an didn’t believe in God any more than he believed in the Tooth Fairy, but after making it from the bowels of the San Fernando Valley to his parking spot in Century City in less than thirty minutes without killing anyone, he was tempted to start. Still, since he would be attending Mr. Prescott’s emergency meeting in a paint-splotched suit, Dan believed that if there was a theological being at work in his life, it was most likely Satan.