Quiet-Crazy (11 page)

Then no sooner does my mind get through turning on who can you trust, than here comes Miss Cannon singing her theme song, “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His word.” And I get so sick of hearing her droning on that I can't take it anymore. “Don't you know,” I say, “that you can't trust
anyone?
Not even Him? Haven't you learned in all of your years that you can't depend on anyone? Not a single soul?”

Just as I decide there isn't a single person on this earth I can trust, I get a postcard from Daddy. And just seeing his trembly writing, knowing how hard it was for him to write with his hands shaking so, that just tears me up inside. Daddy . . . I hadn't even thought about him in deciding who I could and couldn't trust. Maybe it's because he's never, ever done wrong by me. Daddy, well, he is just Daddy, and not someone to wonder about if you should or shouldn't trust.

Anyway, the postcard, once my eyes were clear enough to see it and read, is almost as good as reading Emerson down in the library. He starts off, I think, right clever. “Here goes Shakespeare,” he says, “‘to be or not to be.'” He goes on to say how nothing much is happening around home, and then he ends it by saying, “There is nothing good nor bad, but
thinking makes it so.” It sounds just like something Emerson would come up with, and I wonder if that's where Daddy had found it, in his Emerson book.

No matter where it came from, it makes sense. And that Shakespeare thing, I've been hearing that for years, but up until now, thinking hard on it, I never did think it could be talking about me, Elizabeth. But is Daddy sending me a message? Is he saying, “Look here, you've got to decide if you're going to be Elizabeth or not be Elizabeth?” Since that is the only thing in writing I have ever gotten from Daddy, I treasure it, as if it is the gospel.

Now Mama writes letters all the time, reminding me to fear God and to go to chapel services and to write to her every week. And Mama, well, what can I say? Mama is Mama, just like Daddy is Daddy, and she'll be Mama from now and forevermore. Nothing I can ever do or say will take back all that's gone on between us. So, I just have to take Mama's letters as they come, with a grain of salt. Except the one where she tells me about Caldwell getting real sick; that one bothers me real bad, and it keeps on bothering me until I get the next one where she has tucked inside Caldwell's obituary.

Caldwell dead. I just can't get it through my head. Who will I talk to when I go back home? The way I want to talk, that is. I will talk with Aunt Lona, of course, but sometimes it's good to have a man to talk to, a man you can just say
anything to, like I've been doing here for the past month. It's been almost like having a half-dozen Caldwells all in one place, for you can say anything that pops into your mind, and nobody thinks the worse or better of you for it.

Take this Mavis, this jewel of a roommate I got stuck with. Lord, she's so uppity you can't get her to answer a thing you ask her. Besides that, she won't even look at you, no matter what. “How long you been playing that guitar?” I'll ask her, and she stares off into space, like I haven't said a word. And it's not that she's like Lenny, who for some strange reason can't talk. She just won't talk. Too good to talk to ordinary folks. That's how she acts, sitting there on her bed strumming stuff on that guitar the likes you've never heard before. First it's fast, then slow, then the tune goes ever which way, up and down and all over the place, like it can't decide where it's going.

And Miss Cannon says, just like always, “Honey, play something we can sing, why don't you, something like ‘Amazing Grace' or ‘I'll Fly Away'.” And that's when Mavis puts her guitar up.

Although I'm not all that fond of Miss Cannon, I don't like seeing Mavis treat her that way, not even answering her simple request. And I feel I've just seen Mavis act that way too many times to too many people around here.

“So you think you're too good to play songs like that, huh?” I say. “You're getting beyond your raising, that's what
it is. Getting too good to play something for Miss Cannon here. Why, I bet you don't even eat gravy and biscuits for breakfast, do you? I bet you eat that old cold bought cereal that tastes like cardboard, don't you now?”

That's when Mavis walks away casual as a housecat that's turned over a flowerpot.

Two days later she goes into her room, packs up all of her things, and just as casually walks out the door, not once ever looking back, as if she's glad to be getting out at last. That's when I find out Mavis was “dismissed,” you know the way the preacher dismisses the congregation at the end of the service on Sunday. That's when I find out people don't leave Nathan voluntarily or unvoluntarily, as they come. And that scares me bad. Mainly because, well, maybe I am crazy after all, but I am feeling better and better about being here, and, too, thinking about Mama and Daddy back at home, I am starting to feel all kinds of ways about them.

Some days I feel very grateful for them and miss them something awful. Other days I feel like it'd be fine with me if I didn't go home ever again. Besides, what would I do if I did go back home? Live with Mama and Daddy and work in the pants factory for the rest of my life? Live with Mama and take care of her just like she hadn't never done a thing to me ever? Just pretend it never happened at all?

So, if people are just dismissed, what if the doctors decide to dismiss me and I'm not ready to go? What then? The next
time I talk with Dr. Adams, he tells me not to worry, that people generally stay until they and the doctors think they are ready to leave, especially if they cooperate and really want to help themselves. And that relieves me a lot, because I think surely Dr. Adams can see I am cooperating and really want to help myself.

But when I meet again with Dr. Johnstone, I get awfully confused about what is cooperating and what is not. Dr. Johnstone seems to me something like a Father in one of those churches that you visit and talk through a curtain to and confess your sins. I've seen Dr. Johnstone only once since I've been here, whereas I've talked with Dr. Adams most every day, or played the piano with him or played Ping-Pong or something. And I'm getting quite excellent at Ping-Pong, but nowhere good enough to beat Dr. Adams, although I can almost win over Hemp now and then.

But Dr. Johnstone is like a saint, and it's not easy talking to saints. Especially when it comes to what he wants to talk about, which is sex. I can say that word now, okay, without flinching, you know, and I am glad that I've read the Worry Column in the paper every day, so I at least knew what Dr. Johnstone is talking about. The Worry Column doctor talks about sex a lot, and until I started reading him, I thought I was the only person in the world who didn't know about things you ought to know about along that line. All I
knew about sex was that it was bad. Ugly. Dirty. Something to be ashamed of.

Still, talking about it and reading about it are not the same. And I feel my face go red as Daddy's tea roses when Dr. Johnstone says, “Elizabeth, honey, have you ever had sex with anyone?”

At first, I stare at the pictures hanging on the wall above him, and the longer I look at them, the more I am certain he put them there on purpose to get people in the mood to talking about things like this. The pictures are actually photographs, big, blown-up photographs, in living color. One is the inside view of a conch shell, you know that you can put your ear up to and hear the ocean roar, at least that's what people say it sounds like, though I wouldn't know, since I've never heard the ocean roar. And the lips of the shell, all peachy pink and soft looking, would have to make anybody normal or not think of a woman's you-know-what.

“Look, Elizabeth. Look, honey. See? Wanna touch?”

The other picture, the mushroom, though its cap is a little wide, has the exact same shape as the man's organ that I'd seen pictures of in the medical dictionary in the library. Real clever of Dr. Johnstone, I'll say, hanging up prompts like that to get people talking, although it doesn't work too well on me.

Well, it isn't any of his business, anyway, that's what I
think at first. But by the time he asks me again, I remember what Dr. Adams had said about cooperating and being honest or you couldn't expect to help yourself. So I think, what the heck, and I say no, I haven't had sex unless you want to count that day with old Sheriff Tate in the cemetery, and that wasn't actually sex, by anyone's Bible.

But that doesn't satisfy Dr. Johnstone. He then has to know about Sheriff Tate, and what we did, and how I felt then and how I feel now, and on and on. So I answer everything he asks me as best I can just to get him to hush.

At that, Dr. Johnstone slides up on the edge of his chair and says, “What do you think about, Elizabeth, when you think about having sex with someone?”

But I can't go on with this, you know, who in their right mind can talk with a stark stranger about having sex? Why, I couldn't have talked about it even with Caldwell, not even him, much less a saint. But Dr. Johnstone has another idea. He reaches out, takes both of my hands in his and rubs around on them real tender, looking straight into my eyes, poring over me, making me shudder, making me feel naked, until I turn my face away from him firm and good.

“Can't you tell me, Elizabeth? Can't you?” he asks. And when I shake my head, he says, “There's a way you can. We can pull the curtain,” he says, nodding toward the drapes over in the corner of the room, hanging in front of a couch, “you can lie on the couch behind the curtains and do it with
me and tell me what you think about while we're doing it.”

I pull my hands away from him right quick. Is this supposed to be what goes on at Nathan? Having sex with your psychiatrist? Why, I could do stuff like this when I was six years old. In my own bed. In my own house. Broad daylight.

“It'll be just between you and me, sweetheart. No one will ever know,” he says, and for a moment he doesn't look too much different from old Sheriff Tate, just another old man trying to get a rise out of someone. And the more I think on him, the more he doesn't seem all that different from Mama, saying, “Look, Elizabeth, look, wanna touch?”

I finally find the courage to look at Dr. Johnstone real hard, trying to figure him out, trying, somehow, to find the answer in his face. But all I do is get more and more in a quandary. If I don't have sex with him, will he automatically dismiss me as not cooperating and not wanting to help myself? But how will I help myself by having sex with Dr. Johnstone? Will it, in some strange way, make me feel better about having sex with anyone? I try to imagine Dr. Adams asking me to have sex with him, but I know he would never do that. Is sex a privilege reserved only for the psychiatrist? Or is it not right at all, under any circumstances?

I'll have to say I am curious. Curious about what it might be like, and if it would be different from what I've thought. And if it might help in the long run, to know that, yes, I could have sex with a grown-up man and maybe it would
make me feel more like a grown-up woman, rather than a wild woman-child. Maybe it would take away all that Mama stuff, and I could put her and it and all that crap behind me forevermore, with just this one man. But, no, I simply cannot go through with this thing he is asking me to do. So I get up, look at Dr. Johnstone straight in the eye, and I do believe I look right stern.

“Dr. Johnstone,” I say, “I think I'm ready to be dismissed from Nathan.”

Then I turn and walk out the door, afraid that he won't, but more afraid that he will.

T
he next time I talk with Dr. Adams, I think for sure he is going to say, “Okay, Elizabeth, I heard from Dr. Johnstone that you're not cooperating, you're not being honest, so you're dismissed.”

But he doesn't let on like he knows anything about what went on with Dr. Johnstone, and I wonder if Dr. Johnstone has written down his suggestion in that little silver metal notebook where he's all the time writing. I want so to see what is in that book, because it seems more and more to me like it must be the Lamb's Book of God, you know, where God writes down all the people's names He's sent into the world, and He lists your bad deeds on one page and your good deeds on the opposite page, and if your good deeds total up more than the bad ones then you're sure to be with Him forever in eternity.

But even more than that, I wonder if I should mention the
whole incident to Dr. Adams. If it was wrong of Dr. Johnstone, shouldn't people around here know what he is doing? But, then, more and more I am beginning to think that there must be something about me that makes people do sex things like that to me, when I'm not even asking for it. Although I don't know what that something could be. I certainly don't look fetching. I certainly don't act fetching. Besides, what if I tell Dr. Adams, and then he sees that I am that kind, just asking for it, and then he might want to do it, too, even though he is not the kind to do stuff like that. Or is he? No. I just can't risk it. I can't risk messing up the one great love in my life. Although it is only pretend love, it's the closest thing to real love of a genuine grown-up man I've ever known, or that I might ever know in my life. No matter if there never does come another man around in my life, ever, I will have Dr. Adams, even if it is a memory. Me and him playing “Heart and Soul.” Me and him playing Ping-Pong. Me and him just sitting and talking. Me and him doing the two-step to “Moments to Remember.” Him holding the tissue box for me to cry it all out, though he didn't know the half of it, because I never could tell him such a thing. Why, oh why, does Dr. Adams have to be here in Nathan and married. Why can't he be somewhere around Littleton and single.

Although I don't want to stay at Nathan for eternity, I do want to stay a while longer, long enough to feel even
better about myself. And I'm feeling better already, in spite of Dr. Johnstone, and in spite of that I can't get Lenny to talk, and in spite of I still can't manage to tell anyone about what really happened and what is really wrong, and in spite of getting letters from Mama with her saying everybody in Littleton is wanting to know what is wrong with me, and “what is wrong with you, Elizabeth? Can't you tell me, can't you do that for your mother?”