Tumbledown (31 page)

There was another reason she had doubts about Lolly, one that sounded self-important, and she never voiced it. She believed Lolly’s desire for Jimmy had to do with Violet herself, with joining Violet’s family. Violet had hired her, and Lolly had been so grateful for the job. She wanted to
hang out
with Violet and help with Arthur, and at first, she and Arthur enjoyed her company. There was no denying that Lolly was helpful. Violet leaned on her at times. But there was always an expense.

Once, when the two women were in a specialty grocery, delighted to find several cases of the high-calorie nutritional drink meant to keep Arthur from withering away to nothing, Lolly sought out a clerk to help with the toting, and the young man, an Ichabod type, all elbows and Adam’s apple, said to Violet, “Your sister’s grand. She have a bloke?”

“You told that boy we’re sisters?” Violet asked after the gawky creature finished loading their car.

“Aren’t we, though?” Lolly responded. She had dated the clerk for a couple of weeks—that gangly, ungainly stork. And now these men that crowded about her—given the chance, would any of them resist Lolly’s charms? Was Violet absurd to think her brother ought to know better?

Lolly was telling the boys about her own history as a counselor—the absurd massage idiocy—a recollection that Violet could likely have repeated word for word, and so she knew when Lolly was winding down—yet the final sentences surprised her.

“Do we get to meet some of them?” Lolly asked. “The patients?”

Of course she’d want to meet them, Violet thought. She’d want to display her own therapeutic skills, and god help them if they failed to applaud her talents.

The young men looked earnestly to a somewhat older man whom Violet had met earlier and she did remember his name: John Egri, the departing director. He fit in well with the twenty-something crowd, despite his age, chubby-cheeked and cheerful. All of the men were handsome, or at least well groomed and inoffensive in appearance. She found them difficult to tell apart. For the moment, men did not particularly interest her, not romantically, not sexually, and only rarely intellectually. It was as if the whole gender had lost their verve during the years she was married, and they didn’t seem to be making much effort to get it back. Maybe this was why she could not connect with Jimmy. Maybe it was her fault.

“If you’d like to have a tour of the facilities,” John Egri began, speaking so softly everyone had to lean toward him.

“Not another bloody tour,” Lolly said rather dramatically. “Before I joined Violet at the agency, I worked on a tour bus in London. I had to fake an accent. No one on vacation from Idaho wants to hear about Westminster Abbey from a Jersey girl.”

She still had that fake accent, Violet thought. “We took a tour this morning,” she said. They had strolled the grounds and eaten in the cafeteria. They had not even seen Jimmy’s office. “It was interesting, but we didn’t meet any of the patients. I understand that might be impossible or inappropriate.”

“Oh, well, it’s not that,” John Egri said, and he seemed to say more, but Violet couldn’t hear him. He was so soft-spoken that she wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him.

Lolly, quite sensibly, ignored him. “You were gone so long,” she said to Violet, “I thought maybe the Calamari Cowboys had run you out of town.”

At some point during their acquaintanceship, Violet had confessed to Lolly her shameful secret: she did not like rock music. The secret had been exposed while she was in high school, and the revelation had led to endless invitations from well-meaning boys to listen to one hateful song or another.
I guarantee you’ll like this one,
they said, and along came Guns N’ Roses or Beck or Nirvana or Radiohead or “Freebird” or “Cowgirl in the Sand.” She had been a quiet girl, which many of her peers and teachers misinterpreted as shyness. She was actually fairly comfortable with herself, by teenage standards. She was pretty but not popular, and while she was a good student, she had not joined any of the clubs or societies. She had a few friends. She dated. But she never went in for that
gushing
quality that seemed quintessentially teenage. Much of her senior year, she had dated a boy who was gay—great company and he didn’t mind that she hated U2.

And yet she went off with one of the boys—just the one.
Give it a spin,
he said.
You don’t have to like it.
Robbie Kearns. She tried to remember the song he played for her. Not that it had anything to do with choosing him. She was ready to have a real boyfriend, and he adequately fit the bill. Brave enough to slip his hands beneath her clothing and reasonable enough to accept directions.

Oh, yes, the Beatles, “I Am the Walrus.” She had not liked the song but it had been an unpredictable choice, at least.

There was never a long silence when Lolly was around. Violet had told her about her desire to see the Pacific Ocean, and Lolly used it now in the conversation. Here was another annoying trait of Lolly’s, her appropriation of another’s desires, dreams, even words. Not to mention family members.

“I’d like to see the sun set in the ocean,” Lolly said. “I grew up on the wrong coast for that. And I want to get inside the heads of these patients—the kind James works with. I want to know where he’s putting his energy.”

“He’d better reserve some of that energy for you.” It was the same fellow who had been speaking all along. The American capacity for crassness was stunning, as was Lolly’s terrible gift for flirtation. She gave the fellow a long look and then smiled, displaying her gleaming bank of white teeth. “Bloody right, he better.”

Billy’s peyote vision involved creatures from the natural world speaking English, though he could never quite catch their lips moving. “Always behind my back,” he said, “as if they knew I couldn’t handle seeing where the words were coming from.” He inhaled deeply on the joint and passed it to Mick Coury.

Mick liked the smell of marijuana, especially from a distance. He took in another lungful of smoke and tried to hold it. They had all heard the peyote story before at the sheltered workshop, but they enjoyed listening to Billy Atlas. He had an expressive face, and he loved going over every detail. Mick passed the cigarette to Maura, and immediately coughed smoke in her face.

“Second hand high,” she said, and laughed before sucking on the joint herself.

Mick and Maura and Billy Atlas were sitting on the cool concrete floor in the basement of Danker Dormitory, with Vex and Billy Atlas’s girlfriend making it five. Billy and the girl were on their way to the Phantom Limb, and Mick wanted to tell them that he had been there—at least in the parking lot. He considered describing Violet Candler’s complicated smile, but she hadn’t wanted people to know that she could not follow directions, and anyway, he was practicing not saying things that made him sound stupid.

For the past few weeks, with Karly, he had been hinting about engagement rings. She wouldn’t give him a clue about the type she preferred, and he’d made several idiotic comments about rings and gold and diamonds. He had visited a dozen jewelry stores and listened to strangers tell him about Karly. “A diamond will thrill her,” said one. “Every woman longs for a big rock,” said another. “She’ll want gold,” a young woman in a black jacket said, “even if she preferred silver in the past—gold means forever.” One of the clerks told a joke. “Heard this on the radio,” he said. “A standup guy doing jewelry humor. So the new diamond slogan is
Diamonds, they’ll take her breath away.
And last year’s was
Diamonds, they’ll leave her speechless.
You get the message they’re trying to tell you?
Diamonds, that oughta shut her up.
” Mick had laughed hard and then escaped. Stoned, he could not recall exactly why he had been in such a hurry to get away from the guy. How long had he been thinking about all this? Was everybody in the basement staring at him?

“Gold means forever,” he said aloud.

“Not even close,” Vex said. “Diamonds are forever.” He had supplied the pot, a ziplock baggie, like the kind Mick had kept in his glove box back when he was his real self. He tried to think what else was in the glove box back then. Not gloves, he knew that much for sure.

“James effing Bond,” Billy said.

“Dope used to make me cry,” Vex said. “I know you won’t believe that. It was embarrassing.” He looked like he might break down while he was admitting his tendency to break down. “Makes me think of my dad, how we’d get high together.”

“Your dad dead?” Maura asked.

“Almost,” he said, nodding. “He’s like sixty and he has a mole on his neck.” He pointed to his own neck.

Maura pretended to bite his neck. Vex had blown the lid off the assembly scores—135 boxes in an hour—but there was no way they’d send him to the factory. Two or three times a day he got furious and terrorized people, especially poor Billy. She loved his threats. “I’ll rip off your foot and stick it up your nose,” he’d said. When Maura laughed, Vex turned on her. “You think I won’t beat the shade out of you just because you’ve got a motherfucking vagina?” That had made her laugh harder. Billy had said, “It’s time-out time,” and Vex had hung his head and trudged to the time-out chair.

“This is primo leaf,” Billy said. Anything he said made everyone laugh.

“Generalissimo Atlas,” Maura said, “tell us, please, kind sir, what’s in our files.”

Billy made like zipping his lips, but they cajoled him into it. “Officially,” Billy said to Maura, “you’re a major depressive disorder, single episode, severe without psychotic features.” High, he could not hide his pride at having memorized this. “In my opinion, my
professional
opinion . . .” He took another toke and spoke the remainder while holding his breath. “. . . the better diagnosis is rebel with no effing clue whatsoever.”

“I like that a lot better,” Maura said. She did a rebel yell. “Do him.”

“Mick?” Billy said and exhaled.

“Not the official one,” Mick said. He hated that word.

Billy shrugged. “Okey doke. My diagnosis is . . .
thoughtfulitis.
”

“Oh god, did he nail you,” Maura said. When the laughter subsided, she demanded to know all the others: Rhine was a kindly geek, Alonso a moron with erotic tendencies, Cecil a squeezebox retard, and Karly? He hesitated and smoked to cover his caution.

“You can skip her,” Maura said.

Billy had seen Karly’s records. He knew she was officially
mildly mentally impaired,
which meant
retarded
and made him think that a lot of the people he’d known were likely mildly retarded. Karly was one of the sweetest people he’d ever met, and she wasn’t dumb about everything. She was on Facebook, posting jokes she had heard and commenting on videos. She often got the jokes wrong, and the posts were simple, but Facebook intimidated Billy—the busyness of the page made him feel itchy and overwhelmed. Karly was also on the fifth level of an online video game that he had looked into on Candler’s home computer. It had to do with farming on alien planets, which sounded interesting, but the movement of the characters through the world made Billy carsick. Was it carsick if you weren’t in a car? “If my dad didn’t die,” Karly had said to Billy, “I’d still live at home. He couldn’t help dying, and my mom couldn’t help if it was all too much for her with me there without him.” They had been talking during the lunch break. He had taken her and Alonso to the KFC. After a moment she added, “Everybody can’t help something.” That had stuck with him, and he could hear her voice whenever he recollected it. He said, “I think Karly’s got some complicated stuff in her past that she’s working through, is what I think.”

“That’s not a diagnosis,” Mick said.

“What about Mr. Psycho?” Maura asked, indicating Vex. She wanted to ditch the subject of Karly Hopper.

Billy looked directly at Vex. “That’s easy,” he said. “You’re a
dick.
” The laughter resumed.

“Good thing I’m on the reserve tank from this kickass weed,” Vex said. He was crying and laughing both. “Hate to spoil the party by bashing in your fat face.”

Billy cautioned them against mentioning the dope to others. “It’s only legal in this state if you’ve got glaucoma or cancer or something,” he said, “and I’d hate to have to give you a tumor.”

“Ha ha,” Maura said and then actually laughed, something about forming her lips into the
ha
shape forcing real laughter out of her. “Your jokes are so dumb it’s funny that you think they’re funny.”

Billy Atlas nodded. “So you tell me some funny
smart
stuff. Jokes about quarks and black holes and deconstruction and symbiosis.”

Vex doubled over laughing. He had the joint and smoke came from his mouth in place of language. Mick could almost read the smoke.

Billy Atlas’s girlfriend wasn’t smoking. She was sort of pretty and seemed content to be there, smiling and moving her head, but she wasn’t getting high or making jokes. The room held a stack of metal chairs against one wall, and there was a single grimy window over which they’d draped Billy Atlas’s dark shirt. Billy had a belly that wiggled when he laughed and changed shape when he inhaled. It wasn’t a huge stomach, but it filled his undershirt in a lively way.

“That old car of yours,” Maura told Billy, “needs a quark of oil.”

They all laughed, which told Mick the pot was working. He had smoked pot before his illness but this was the first time since. He was pretty sure he was enjoying himself.

“That proves my point,” Billy said. “It’s funny because it’s dumb. But did you see the car I’m driving tonight?”

“A smart-looking car?” Mick asked.

“Okay, all right, look,” Maura said, still burping up an occasional giggle as she continued. “Here’s something incredibly smart that’s also funny. Hysterical. When I was in high school, back about an hour ago, I had a physics class at the cross town high school because there were only enough brainiacs in the whole town for one physics class, and I had to ride the bus with these completely genius boys who were hopeless to comprehend the idea of sex, and I was the only girl, and one day when we were riding the school bus to the class, I told one of the boys that I’d show him my tits if he’d tear up his homework.”