The Heroines (11 page)

“You ever have any?”

“This is about you, Penny. And why you’re here. It’s sooo important that you can articulate why. It’s a first step toward healing, and toward getting you”—she grinned and stuck out her thumb like a hitchhiker—”the heck out of Dodge!”

Years of secret-keeping made speaking the truth a radical and liberating act. I both feared and relished it. In my inexperience, I wielded the truth as well I would have wielded an AK-47. “My mom’s afraid an imaginary guy’s going to get me.”

“Yes, something about a Celtic king…”

“Conor MacNessa.” Simply saying his name sent this new, alien flush of warmth through me. I loved the feeling. I told myself to keep my pipe shut, but I couldn’t seem to do it. “Lord of the Red Branch Knights.”

“Do
you
think he’s trying to hurt you?”

“No.” I lowered my voice and waited for Peggy to move in closer.

She did. She leaned forward in her leatherette executive chair, tucking a strand of long, dishwater blond hair behind her ear.

“He needs me,” I said.

“Needs you.” She scribbled on a yellow legal pad. “You believe that you and he had a special relationship? Kind of a father-daughter connection?

“More than that.”

“Boyfriend-girlfriend?”

“If you can dream it, you can become it!” I sang.

“Funny!” She smiled and pointed with her thumb at the poster behind her. Then she shifted her weight and leaned into the desk, gearing up. “Now, I was just wondering, was your father Irish?”

“Wouldn’t know.
He’s
the imaginary character.”

“What
do
you know about him?”

“He’s dead. My mom was a teenager. He played football.” I decided to throw an honest hardball. “My grandmother wanted my mother to give me up for adoption. She didn’t think my mother could handle raising a child on her own.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I don’t know.”

The rest of our session passed in ping-pong banter about what constituted “reality.” Then I clammed up and focused on my telepathic messages to Conor:
Think about me right now. Pick up the wave. Follow it here.

Peggy then got some brown construction paper out of her desk drawer and a pair of round-tipped kindergarten scissors. She told me to cut out my ice-cream cone. Then she gave me a copy of a long list of behaviors that would earn me scoops: showing good listening skills, being responsible, helping somebody else, avoiding conflicts. At the end of the week, the scoops could be traded for privileges.

“Knock, knock.” Alice stood at the door with one leg twisted around the other, staring at us. Peggy rose and directed her to take a seat in the half circle of folding chairs. I sat across from her, my thighs chilled by the cold metal chair. They cranked the air-conditioning to bacteria-annihilating levels in this place. As the other girls trickled in, Peggy introduced me to Maria (who’d been pawing the window) and a younger girl named Jennifer I’d never seen before. Her face looked more like a skull: dark circles under her eyes, sunken cheeks. Next came Jackie, pulling faces that alternated between owlish (wide-eyed and shocked) and shrewd (slant-eyed and sneering). It almost seemed that she was looking at herself in the mirror, practicing her intimidation techniques. Kristina skipped in, her hair undone again, and her blouse unbuttoned to just above her bra. The tongues of her Keds flapped around her feet, the shoes laceless, and she’d changed into a daisy miniskirt. I immediately sensed another mood shift—the wild and destructive energy was unleashed. The comment she’d made in front of Peggy about Ophelia and Blanche had set me on edge.

Peggy rolled her executive chair around the desk and filled in the empty spot in the horseshoe. She waved a stack of ice-cream scoops at us. “I first want to say that everybody gets a scoop just for being here today. If you behave well, and share your feelings, you may earn another. Today we’re going to talk about responsibility.” She looked around, waiting, out of habit I guessed, for a sarcastic comment.

Kristina grinned and sat on her hands, shaking her head as if to suggest that she could say something very smart, but she was trying really hard to be
good
. She tucked in her lips and shook her hair over her cheeks.

“Responsibility means,” Peggy continued, “that we accept the consequences of our actions. What I’d like to do today is have everybody in group name one thing they did that led them to being here today.”

Nobody said anything. Peggy’s act was bombing, and I was not inclined to make it easier for her. What I needed to think about was
not
how I got there, but how the hell I would get out. Sheepish and peevish, I resisted playing Peggy’s game. She was too uncool to win us over; anybody who fell for her act was, I sensed, immediately demoted in the nuthouse hierarchy written by the patients. In fact, everybody seemed to behave worse in group—more crazy, more cocky, more show-offy.

Finally, to break the silence, Kristina yelled out. “I fucked my teacher!”

“I jumped in Wonder Lake!” Jackie yelled.

“That’s wonderful, you two,” Peggy said.

I gave her a quizzical look, so she added, “It shows a lot of growth that you’re both willing to acknowledge what behaviors led you to your current situations.” She turned to another girl. “Jennifer?”

“I can’t sleep,” said Jennifer.

“Well, that’s a
symptom
of what’s going on with you, not an actual reason for why you’re here. But you’re new. So I’ll give you a pass for today.”

Jackie leaned back dangerously in her chair, balancing on the tips of her slippered toes. She’d gotten a hold of some orange lipstick, which clashed with her shiner. “She set her mattress on fire!”

“How do you know?” Kristina said.

“It’s true! I heard them talking about it.” Jackie continued to teeter on the back legs of her chair. It disturbed me that she had insider information on everybody, including me. I pictured her tiptoeing down hallways, hiding under beds, crouching on the toilet with the stall door locked so she could listen to the staff converse. Jennifer turned her face and gave Jackie one of the dirtiest looks I’d ever seen: teeth clenched, eyes narrowed, and lips trembling. Something between a growl and a purr came out of her mouth. Then she turned back, lifted her chin, and stared straight ahead at the rainbow peace poster. A quiver of fear shook my shoulders.

“Jackie,” Peggy said. “You know better! You’re not supposed to speak for other people in group. Sit up straight, please. You could fall and crack your skull. Let’s move on. Penny, are you ready to tell us why you’re here?”

“My mom’s crazy.”

“No, no, no!” Alice jumped up. She waved her arms over her head as if she were flagging down someone three blocks away. “She has to talk about what
she
did.”

“The blame game will get you nowhere!” Jackie said. She wagged a finger and closed one of her beat-up eyes. The shiner had turned yellow-brown, and when she smiled, I saw discolored teeth.

I affected a zombie monotone. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Well, that’s what you need to think about,” Peggy said. “Let’s hear from some of you girls who’ve been at this a bit longer. It takes time to get used to talking about our feelings.”

“I know why she’s here,” Kristina said. “And it’s really, really not her fault!” Her tone was sincere, but there was something sinister underneath it. “All these Heroines come to her house. From plays and novels. Really!”

“Enough, Kristina,” Peggy said.

“It’s true. And she thinks they’re real.”

“Shut up, Kristina,” I snapped.

“She’s soooooo important, all these famous ladies want to stay at her fancy house.”

“I said
enough,
Kristina,” Peggy said.

I clenched my fingers, imagined wrapping them around Kristina’s throat. It was bad enough that I had to tolerate the Heroines’ antics, my mother’s attention to them but not to me. But to have somebody say that I’d made them up to get attention really burned me. I’d expected as much from the adults. But Kristina was acting like I was a spoiled brat. “Just shut up!” I yelled. What a mistake to have told her anything! I hardly even knew her, and now she was making me look like a nut. I’d given her all the ammunition she needed.

“Both of you! You’re on warning. Let’s all take a time-out. Silence! We’ll all close our eyes and breathe deeply.”

Peggy, Jennifer, Alice, and Maria all closed their eyes, but I stared Kristina down. She bugged out her eyes at me, but then turned them on Jackie, whose delighted eyes moved back and forth over our faces like a pendulum on a cuckoo clock. The others breathed in and out, and the sound of their whistling noses became excruciating. Kristina, still seated in the metal folding chair, kicked her leg high and started to sing, “I’m in love with a man, that I’m talking about! I’m in love with a man, that I can’t live without.”

“Leg down, please. You’re exposing yourself,” Peggy said.

Kristina gripped the seat of her chair and kicked even higher, her pale blue underwear flashing beneath her miniskirt. “But I must have picked a bad time for being—”

“A slut!” Jackie sang. “A bad time for being a slut!”

Kristina’s laceless Ked fell to the floor while her foot, in its holey sock, hung in the air for a moment. She swung the toes into Jackie’s face, an inch from her mouth. Everybody froze. Then even Jackie was rigid, looking at Kristina’s chipped red toenails poking through the sock. Kristina’s arms trembled as she balanced on her chair, but her leg was firm, tan, the hamstring curved as a bow.

“Kristina! You’re on warning.” As Peggy struggled to her feet, her chair flew back behind her.

Kristina cast a winning smile around the group, her gorgeous leg still high, then she opened her big and second toes and squeezed Jackie’s nose hard.

Jackie screamed and pushed Kristina’s foot off her face, and the chair slipped out from under Kristina. She landed on her hands, her ass on the floor. She pushed herself up and back into her chair. The group went wild. Alice stomped her feet, crying, “Not fair, not fair.” Even stone-faced Jennifer cracked a smile, leaning back in her chair as if to distance herself from joining the melee. Maria covered her face with her arm. The dexterity and audacity of Kristina’s move stunned me, and I burst out laughing. Jackie jumped from her seat. She balled her fists and stuck out her ass and squatted, her bottom lip swallowing her top lip. She looked like an angry monkey. Then I heard the trickle and tinkle of her pee splashing on the linoleum.

The next thing I heard were the wheels of Peggy’s chair, as Maria careened around the room in it. As Peggy rushed to the door, a bunch of ice-cream scoops flew off her lap and fluttered to the ground. Jennifer leapt up and started sweeping them into the crook of her arm.

Peggy ran and pushed the intercom button and yelled, “Mr. Gonzo! Mr. Gonzo, Group Room!”

The pee pooled at Jackie’s feet, bright yellow and pungent from vitamins and meds. Kristina sat back in her chair, cool as a movie star, one leg draped over another, smoking an imaginary cigarette. She swept her hair over one shoulder and static snapped and crackled between her fingers.

Two orderlies ran into the room, and each grabbed one of Jackie’s arms. Jackie kicked her legs and howled. Then she jumped in the air, her heels tucked into her ass, and the men carried her over the puddle of pee. Jackie stayed frozen in her tuck, as they passed sideways through the door.

“Everyone back to their rooms!” Peggy yelled. “Group is over. And you’re on probation, Kristina.”

“Boohoo! Like I care about that.”

“You better care. It’s your fifth this week. That means isolation.” She swung her head out the door. “Mr. Gonzo!”

Kristina pointed at the puddle of pee. “This one’s shaped like a kidney bean!”

Two more goons stormed through the doors, their keys bouncing off their developed chests. Peggy pointed at Kristina. “Get her! Isolation!”

They grabbed Kristina’s arms and yanked her out of the chair. She wasn’t going down easily. She jabbed one in his side, kicked the other in the shins. They tightened their grip on her arms, then one stepped behind her and pushed his knees into the back of hers to make them buckle. She held fast. Alice started to keen like a banshee. The men lifted Kristina up and slammed her, face forward, to the ground. Her forehead bounced off the tile floor, and blood spurted out of her nose. Her skirt rose dangerously close to her ass. They pinned her legs with their feet, and pressed her arms behind her back. I saw one of the orderlies twist it.

“You’re breaking my arm!” she cried.

“When are you going to learn, Kristina?” Peggy asked. “You’ve got to change your behaviors.”

One of the orderlies laughed. “She likes it rough.”

When Kristina switched into her Blanche DuBois voice, “What such a man has to offer is animal force,” they pressed her shoulders into the floor. “What a display we have tonight!” Then she let loose a cackle. “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire!”

“Stand her up!” Peggy shouted.

They lifted Kristina from the ground; she held herself rigid as a stretcher. Blood dripped onto her shirt. Alice’s keening had reached a pitch detectable only by hounds. She started to stomp her feet, marching in place like a psycho majorette.