by Emma Janson
Why?
The true encounter of the documented “Quinceñera Fifteen Fire Starters” aided in his convincing tales of self-destruction, so it wasn’t that farfetched for those he encountered to believe he was suffering from a traumatic stress disorder.
He walked around campus in melancholy until someone spoke to him who carried influence – like a teacher – and then he would snap in such a manner that they feared for their own safety and the safety of other students. The first few times, he laughed at the teachers for jumping the way they did. There was a certain amount of joy to be found in being fake-crazy. It was undeniably liberating to ignore social norms.
Ignacio found that, in order to perpetuate his lie, he had to admit himself to the mental ward of the local hospital about once every two weeks, setting up a visible pattern of instability. In turn, the hospital doctors referred him to several social workers and psychologists, and in two counties, who all agreed that his mental wellbeing was in flux. They were completely unaware of its depth. He left college and dorm life to move back into his grandmother’s home. Regardless of these circumstances, though, she never spoke of Juana’s horror story to Ignacio, and he never asked her to. Eventually, after dealing with thick packets of many signed forms, he was given a government check every month in return for his new label – mentally disabled.
Getting paid for the rest of his life without being a productive member of society took him two years of consistent lying to establish. It also took an emotional toll on his otherwise genuinely happy self – or so he thought.
Playing his part in Operation NALP became daily fruitless work when he couldn’t get more funding from the state and it was made clear to him that Juana was no closer to him than when he’d started. He simply hadn’t grasped how difficult it would be to maintain a lie of this magnitude…until he tried to “fake” his way through it. In truth, though, Ignacio was so disturbed that he believed he was completely sane while pretending to have serious mental health problems. He saw it as a game. It was calculated, contained mayhem, and it kept him occupied.
At twenty years old, after 30 months of pretending to be crazy, Ignacio was contacted by a researcher who’d been recommended by one of his doctors. The group the researcher represented came with binders of paperwork for him to sign, and he obliged without carefully reading any of it because he was sticking to the plan – he had to learn more about his mother, and that meant sticking to the operation he’d concocted, so far as he was concerned.
When he received the Northern Lights brochure at his grandmother’s home, he lied about his plan. Additionally, there was no polite way to tell her that her hoarding up stacks of meaningless trash was cramping his style. Her packrat home had begun as fixable clutter back when Grandpa had died, but then Juana had dumped an infant on her after trying to kill the family in a fire – it was no surprise that the clutter had just gotten out of hand. She couldn’t afford luxuries and was forced into bare essential, low-income housing which manifested in her having issues with letting objects go. Granted, walkable, clear pathways through the chaos existed, though by this time the clutter was stacked to the ceiling, but it was no place to heal a broken mind. And in addition to the special conditions she lived in, her neighborhood on Elliot Street was the kind of place where random toddlers in sagging diapers stood in the middle of the road after midnight. The tearless children only added to the disturbing type of neighborhood such a good woman had ended up occupying. It wasn’t her fault; it was circumstances beyond her control, but it wasn’t something Ignacio could deal with – not while looking for answers and faking craziness.
Getting away from the conditions of the home was only a bonus to his plan. Lying about the plan was the worst part of the whole charade. Ignacio told her the treatment he needed worked best when it was focused and concentrated. It was the most appropriate lie. That being said, she packed him a wonderful lunch for the road trip and wished him the best without further complaint.
After a lengthy goodbye and with a simple packed bag, Ignacio began driving to the Northern Lights Behavioral Rehabilitation Center in upstate New York. He wanted the relaxing, carefree environment of the nut house to set him free from this life that he’d purposely spun out of control. He couldn’t wait to be in a clean room and experience whatever it was they called art therapy.
He was sticking to the plan.
THE ACQUISITION OF THE MANSION
Hours from his destination, the blurring time faded into minutes. He finally looked around to take in the beauty of the area. So close to the mental health facility, and yet so far away, the evening sky fell upon the horizon of landscape that was ready to surrender to winter snow. The colors were the most beautiful pallet Ignacio had ever seen in his life. Here was a relief from the images he’d happened to consume at seven years old. He shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind from the tragedy that had haunted his entire life and focus on the present moment.
Though Ignacio considered his story to be pretty strange, he would have been shocked to discover the history behind his destination.
The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Reed had founded Northern Lights in 2005 under their own unique circumstances. They’d shared many dreams before then, but the facility had never been one of them.
In 1980, during Jack Reed’s college days, he was a thin, black-haired kid who was enthralled with earth sciences. He dabbled in sports on occasion mostly to keep his dad off his back. His unnecessary anxieties over controllable asthma prevented anyone from seeing his exceptional skills on the court. A little more research on the realities of being asthmatic could have put him in the games with Larry Bird if he’d worried less about inhalers he didn’t need, but he had no way of knowing it.
Jill, a fair-skinned redhead, had dreams of becoming a CEO just like her power-dressing mother. She maintained an exceptional grade point average although she held her own reservations about how she would manage a career with her ideal six children, after marriage. The balance of being a successful working woman and homemaker excited her, though.
Jack and Jill’s different worlds collided at a ‘Save the Earth One Business at a Time’ rally, in the midst of tambourine-banging hippies and young entrepreneurs who would one day design computer operating systems for Apple. They quite literally bumped into each other as Jill scanned her calendar and Jack followed a red-winged bird in the sky that was regionally out of place. They were two different kinds of dreamers who would one day share the same hopes, and their courting was fast and furious, yet innocent and loving. Their inseparable chemistry was the envy of their friends, and their given names, Jack and Jill, added to the perception that they were a perfect couple. They were so happy together that they made others around them happy, so it was no surprise to anyone when Jack eventually asked Jill’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. After graduation as a married couple, they settled down near Syracuse, New York.
As life happened, living happily instead became their priority. Three beautiful red-headed children were the focus of their joy, and so their dreams never died; they just transformed. When Jack and Jill were in their early forties, the oldest child was running her own confections business. The middle child joined the Army and married, and when the youngest left for medical school - a new dream was set in motion. It was early 2004 when they sold everything, obtained business loans, and moved into a foreclosed mansion in upstate New York. The new idea was to maintain a vacationers’ luxury bed and breakfast which was surrounded by a beautiful vineyard.
The grounds had been owned by the Kirschenbaum lineage of Germany. The estate had been an active winery for 78 years, until the last widower had become senile and was found, on more than one occasion, re-enacting his time in WWII under the fearful reign of Adolf Hitler. When the war-torn veteran bombed the staff with tomato grenades one too many times, they left one by one, and even without their last paychecks.
Thus, Mr. Kirschenbaum eventually lost the family estate to fore
closure. The Reeds’ idea was to turn the 22-bedroom mansion into a bed and breakfast while maintaining the winery for profit and as a secondary, unique tourist attraction. The collective idea worked, too…until it did not. With limited funds and staff, they finally concluded that they might have bitten off more than they could chew in their first year of ownership. Something had to give, and it eventually did – if not in the way that the Reeds would have hoped.
German twins were the eventual reason for the transition from bed and breakfast to a behavioral health facility, but of course this wasn’t mentioned in the brochure sitting by Ignacio’s side as he drove down the highway. The brochure’s text simply explained the early start-up of the facility as if it had come from a calculated business plan, though this wasn’t necessarily the truth. Within the first year of the bed and breakfast operation, some unique guests arrived which changed everything – the aforementioned German twins: seventy-two-year-old identical sisters who had planned to spend their two week vacation at Northern Lights.
The pudgy sisters loved every detail of the antique décor and the novel idea of running a vineyard in addition to the bed and breakfast. They giggled at every joke Jack told within his classes on the vinification process, and found a wonderful delight in following Jill to the kitchen to help her serve dinner. Hilda and Ute Schmidt – pronounced Oo-tuh, as they frequently corrected others – were like Terriers; always alert and ready for anything. Together, they were up before sunrise to help change linens, procure breakfast, clear tables, wake the staff for early grape-picking, and welcome newcomers as they entered the grand foyer. At night, the other patrons could hear the hearty laughs of the twins echoing down hallways as they sipped their hidden liquor from German-crafted pewter flasks, as if they were teenagers. Sometimes others joined the ladies in the formal library to share stories and hear the grand adventures the twins claimed they’d been a part of in their younger days.
They were a delight to have around, and an exceptionally pleasant pair to have grace the downtrodden atmosphere of the struggling business. That was, until the sixth day of their visit, when their excitement and helpfulness was still as fresh and vibrant as it had been the moment they’d arrived. Their tenacious appetite for joy was much more than the average person could possibly handle. Entertaining the pair was absolutely draining. It was as if two children, already excited about a trip to Disneyland, consistently feasted on meals filled with sugar. Any parent would harbor fantasies of the perfect wrestling sleeper-hold to knock each one unconscious for the duration of the trip without killing the poor darlings.
Jack was the first to become frustrated when Ute, with extraordinary enthusiasm, demanded that he teach her how to use the mechanical harvesters as she stepped up and into the driver’s seat without permission. Jack insisted – with great patience – that she get down, but Ute scolded him through giggles, proclaiming that he could and would teach an old dog new tricks. Then she slapped at her overly abundant chest while roaring in laughter and wiping tears of exuberance from her beady eyes. Angered and terribly confused, Jack walked to the back of the mansion, toward a greenhouse that held the keys. He thought deeply about how he should handle the situation, should Ute wait for him in the mechanical harvester. And yes, the thought did cross his mind to physically pull and toss her old ass to the earth in between rows of vine. The fleeting image of yanking her chunky arm down as he watched her, finally in a state of shock rather than fixed in a budding smile, was temporarily relieving, but alas, Jack wasn’t that kind of a man, and he concluded that calling the police was a better option for everyone.
On his walk to the greenhouse, though, Jack unexpectedly found Hilda neatly aligning eight bushels of hand-picked grapes in tidy rows. His compounding anger wasn’t with her effort necessarily, but with the fact that it was too soon to get premium juice from the ill-ripened vines that she’d picked. Livid, and unable to control himself, he escorted Hilda to her sister with a gentle hand on the small of her beefy back. When they approached Ute, still giggling on the harvester, Jack firmly insisted that they retire to the house and instructed each of the twins to refrain from hindering his work again.
The twins just whispered and laughed at the idea of getting in trouble at their age. Ute, who seemed more dominant, spoke first. “Vhat vill you do? Put fraulines in prison for helping?”
Hilda agreed, “Ja, prison? However, they serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner in American prisons for free! Vouldn’t be so bad.” After putting this positive spin on the unfortunate life of an inmate, she hooked her thick right arm around her twin’s thick left arm, and together they dismissed Jack altogether. They chatted as if he wasn’t walking behind them toward the side entrance of the mansion.
“Rationed portions vould do you goot! Your middle is like ‘Das ist all, folks!’” Hilda giggled as she touched her sister’s stomach, which wobbled like Jell-O in her hand.
“Oh, das p-p-p-pig? Goot one! Vas ist pig’s name?”
From behind the two farm-fed women with butts bigger than any video vixens, Jack shook his head and mumbled in defeat, “Porky. Porky the pig.” His hand rolled over his forehead and rubbed at his temples in obvious frustration. And Hilda just squealed while Ute attempted to reenact the famous Porky the Pig’s unique yet annoying laugh. After barely closing the door behind them and locking it, Jack saw the women throw themselves to the floor in hysterics that came complete with crying and labored attempts to catch their breath. Jack just walked straight to the security camera room and locked the door behind him to review tapes and get a few hours away from the chaos before he lost his mind.
Alone in the security room, Jack opened overdue bills while he reviewed footage of the facility. A hand-written letter from the Kirschenbaum estate was at the bottom of the mail pile. Within the envelope was neatly typed correspondence on official letterhead from a German government agency. It seemed strange that a letter of such professionalism would be sent with scripted addresses, Jack thought. He sank into his chair while reading the black and white text.
When he finished reading through it, he glared at the stack of bills on the edge of the desk. Captured in the monitors were the twins, busily cleaning and re-organizing the lobby. A red-headed man appeared in the corner of the screen, and his face led Jack to believe he was asking the women what they were doing. They laughed so hard that Ute couldn’t stop clutching at her jiggling stomach, and Jack just watched blankly as the man attempted to escort the twins to their room with a face of deep concern. Jack shook his head, shut off the monitors, and walked to the master suite.
From his room, he and Jill could hear the twins joyously cackling in some far corner of the mansion. The echo transformed it into something menacing by the time it trickled into their bedtime conversation. Jill, who was comfortably seated under their goose-down comforter, was braiding her faded hair, now strawberry blonde with random silver streaks throughout. The braiding seemed to get a little tighter and more haphazard as the sounds taunted and agitated her relaxed mood. Jack paced at the end of the bed while retelling the story of the twins infiltrating his business outside of the guided tours. She listened to him rant as she finished her hair, then hunkered down to a position for nighttime reading.
She tried consoling him while adjusting the comforter through sighs of frustration, but it was a doomed effort. “Had I not experienced the horror of finding all of the antiques pulled from the walls and polished to a high shine, I would have thought they were just trying to help and you were overreacting.” Thinking of the episode, she began to swell with anger. “However, the value is depreciated! I mean, you should have seen the sparkling objects, organized by date! By date, Jack. I was going to sell the pieces at an auction, but…well, they destroyed plan B. We are 41, but I don’t even have that kind of energy! I don’t think I can handle another week of this.”
Jack scratched at the stubble on his face, and then finally folded his side of the comforter down to slip into bed. “I’ve been thinkin
g about it all day long, and I believe those old biddies are legitimately straight from the coo-coo’s nest.”
“Ya think?” Jill squirted a bit of lotion into her hands and set the bottle back onto her nightstand so that she could rub it in.
Jack fussed around to get comfortable. “I feel like, as much as they pissed me off this past week, if we directed their energy better, we could use them to help get this place back on track.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down in thought.
“What are you not telling me, Jack Reed? I can feel you’ve got something up your sleeve. That’s the weirdest thing you have said in months.” Her hands rotated around each other while a few knuckles unintentionally cracked through the sound of moist aloe.
Jack’s cold toes tickled at her calf. “I opened a letter today from Germany. Not for the Schmidt twins, but about them. Basically, a German private facility wants to pay us to let the twins stay here so that they can research their disorder. They are bat-shit crazy, with something called Hypermania, which is why they’re trapped being happy. They’ve had their lives recorded since they were teenagers! And here’s the grand finale, Jill: these researchers want to pay us whatever it takes to let them live here!” He wiggled his toes again in excitement.
Jill slapped at his shoulder with her newly hydrated hands. “You’re kidding! What kind of dough are we talking here? They want to watch these women because they’re happy?”
“Hypermania, Jill. Have you ever, ever seen them drop a smile or stop giggling in six days? They would pay us enough to keep this place going and hire a few more people to help with the vineyard.” He snuggled up to Jill, smashing his flaccid penis against her leg, and then wiggled again. “We’ll hire help with the house, too.”
