Dead Crazy

by Nancy Pickard

  “I know you will!”

  “Even if I manage the groundwork, there’s no guarantee that I’ll recommend this project to my trustees, or, that if I do, they’ll approve it. I hope that’s clear, Mrs. Paine?”

  Her smile was a simper. “Oh, call me MaryDell.”

  I was afraid of that. Out of revenge, I went for the jugular: “And how did you come to be so involved in this business, MaryDell?” I knew what she’d say, something civic and pious. But between her syrupy words about helping people, there would lie, like a greedy snake, her own neurotic need for attention and for something, anything, to occupy her empty, unfocused days.

  Sure enough, her eyes filled like ice-cube trays, and I thought, Here it comes—how she just feels so sorry for all those poor, sad, crazy people, and if she can just do her teensy-weensy bit to help them, she’ll feel she’s done something to help clean up her little-bitty corner of the—

  “My brother is paranoid-schizophrenic,” she said.

  2

  She had finally got my attention, all of it.

  I stared at her, and then I glanced away with a feeling of contrition. Unable for the moment to meet her eyes, I watched her soft hands roll into fleshy balls on the arms of her chair, then creep into her lap. The hands huddled together, like frightened or angry animals, on the hills of her thighs.

  When I looked up, MaryDell had closed her eyes, so that for a moment the full blue moons were eclipsed. I felt as if I were, in fact, staring at a dark, private side of her. Derek and I exchanged glances again, but of a different sort this time. Neither of us spoke. We waited for her.

  When she opened her eyes, they were dulled, like her voice.

  “It isn’t a secret,” she said, although her strained, hushed tone gave it the feeling of one. “I suppose you might as well know. Everybody else does. I … I used to be ashamed of him, but … I’m … older now.” She shook her head, as if somebody had disagreed with her. Not a hair of her lacquered bowling ball moved. Even then, I found it difficult not to observe her cynically. “So’s he, Lord knows. Older.” She took a breath, like a diver plunging into deep water. “My brother is forty-six years old. And he’s insane. He’s been in and out of institutions since he was sixteen. They released him again last month, and they won’t take him back because they say he’s not sick enough. Not sick enough!” A little of her old energy came back into her voice and eyes. “He can’t support himself, he won’t come home, he won’t even talk to any of us in the family about it! The last time I saw Kitt, he was sleeping on a park bench!” The face she turned toward Derek was shocked, indignant. “Did you know that people from decent homes really do that? He doesn’t have a place to live, he can’t hold a job, heaven only knows what he finds to eat….” She shuddered; a fold of red silk fell from her lap, making a soft swishing sound on its way down her leg. “Winter’s coming! What’s he going to do then? What are any of them going to do then?” She beat her small, fat fists on her lap. “He doesn’t want the family’s help. He yells and says simply terrible things if we try to help him, but he’s my only sibling.”

  Sibling. My teeth clenched involuntarily at the pompous sound of the word.

  She opened her hands then, and frowned at them as if she didn’t recognize them. They snapped shut like turtles. She raised her chins, and some of the old arrogance returned, but not enough to hide the naked pleading.

  “I’d buy the damn hall myself,” she said, surprising me again, this time with the profanity that seemed out of character. “If I could. But it’s all we can do to keep him in psychiatrists now. I just can’t ask my husband to do more than that. I can’t!” She leaned toward me, reaching out her right hand to me, across my desk. “If you don’t help us, if you don’t help Kitt and all those other crazy people just like him, I don’t know what we’ll do, I just don’t know. You simply must help us, Mrs. Bushfield!”

  “Jenny,” I said quickly, reaching across my desk to meet her halfway, to pat her hand. I ignored the base feeling I had that even that impassioned speech of hers had seemed canned. I felt my voice go softer. “Please, call me Jenny.” I pushed my telephone across my desk toward Derek. “What’s the landlord’s name?”

  “George Butts,” she murmured.

  Derek, taking my hint, reached for the receiver with one hand and dialed Information with the other.

  “Oh, I do thank you,” MaryDell Paine murmured. She leaned back in her chair and dabbed at the corner of her eyes with her knuckles. I had the fleeting, unworthy thought that it was a practiced gesture, to keep her long red fingernails from poking her eyes out.

  Butts couldn’t see me for an hour and a half.

  That allowed more than enough time for MaryDell Paine to leave my office, for Derek and me to discuss her request, and for me to reach the property in time for the appointment. Unfortunately, it also left enough time for me to move on to the next piece of business on my agenda.

  “Derek,” I said, as if to stop him from leaving my office. In fact, he had propped one leg on another, slouched down in the chair until his blond head rested on the back of it, entwined his fingers over his chest, and looked, generally, as if he might spend the rest of the day at ease there.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me.

  That small gesture, so typical of his minimalist approach to his job, annoyed me so much that regret and guilt slipped instantly away from me. If my decision needed clinching, that raised eyebrow did it.

  When I had hired him five years previously, I had figured him for an ambitious young man who might use the foundation as a stepping-stone. In the meantime, I hoped we would benefit from his talents, which seemed to include initiative and ingenuity. He had those skills, all right—he used them brilliantly to concoct his excuses. I’d also hired him because he seemed to have the spunk to disagree with the boss, to say no even when everyone else around me was saying yes. Eventually, I’d come to view even that as merely a remnant of adolescent rebelliousness. Five years earlier, I had thought I was hiring a man, but he had turned out to be, in many ways, still a boy—cute, funny, mischievous, bright, thoughtless, unable to commit himself fully to anything meaningful or to anyone, self-centered, and impulsive as a monkey.

  “It’s October fourteenth, Derek,” I said.

  His attitude didn’t immediately appear to change, but something in his blue eyes—a change in the pupils, some slight movement at the corner of his mouth—betrayed an awareness.

  “Your final probation period ends today,” I said.

  He slid to a sitting position in the chair, placed both feet on the carpet, straightened his shoulders, his back, his posture. Like a schoolboy, he grinned at me with mock innocence and said sweetly, as to a schoolteacher, “You look real pretty today, Ms. Cain.”

  “You’re fired, Derek.”

  The words felt like bullets coming from my mouth. They stung and burned me. But I also had to acknowledge a tingling feeling—a small, vicious electrical charge of spite, of getting even, of power, or why else would I have chosen to say it so bluntly?

  He blinked—an involuntary reaction, I think, as if something unexpected had blown into his eyes. Then he started to grin at me, as if I’d made a joke. But the grin dissolved before it reached his eyes; the corners of his mouth turned down, imparting to his mobile face the appearance of those theatrical masks that display comedy and tragedy. He leaned forward slightly, as if to see me better.

  “What?” he said.

  I gazed back at him, biting my lip to keep my mouth shut. I had decided earlier that I would not rationalize, I would not justify, I would not defend, I would not apologize. I had said it all before, he had heard it all before. I had his employee evaluations in my desk. I had his signature on his probation agreement, where he had agreed in writing to clean up his act within a specified time, or be, as they say, terminated. He had not kept his word, and so this time had arrived.

  He laughed briefly, the most popular boy turned down for a date and not believing it.


  “You’re not really going to do it, Jenny?”

  I couldn’t help it—I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Oh, come on, Jenny, so I’m late a few times. So—”

  In the face of whatever he saw in my expression, he stopped cold. And laughed. Then stopped laughing just as abruptly. Laughed again. Looked at me, stopped again. It was finally sinking in. I would know that he believed it, and accepted it, if he didn’t try to charm me out of it.

  He was breathing fast and lightly, like a skier after a long run. He made several odd, disjointed motions with his hands and body, movements that probably reflected the chaotic state of his mind and emotions. Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere but there, doing anything but this.

  “Five years, Jenny!” he said.

  At that moment, I hated being boss. Strangely, this was the first time I’d ever had to fire anyone. There are some experiences in life that I’d rather gain vicariously, and this was turning out to be one of them.

  “I can’t believe this!” he said in a loud voice. “You can’t—I can’t—”

  He shook his head, as if to clear it. When he finally spoke again, it was to ask, in a voice that was characteristically cocky but uncharacteristically gruff, “So, Boss Lady. When do you want me out of here?”

  I started to reply, but he continued, his voice rising as if some fury had exploded, “Do I leave today? Pack it up and get the fuck out? Tail between my legs? Tarred and feathered—” He bit his lower lip to regain control of himself, laughed, shrugged, grinned strangely at me. “Sorry. I mean, when do I have to go?”

  This scale of emotions he was playing—and trying to control—was unnerving and upsetting me. Did you think this was going to be easy? I asked myself. Did you think he’d just say, “Oh, well, of course, you’re right, Jenny. So sorry about being such a jerk, but I see your point.” I had known this would be rough, but I hadn’t counted on the raw emotions that were playing unpredictably across his face: first surprise; then disbelief, anger, sadness; then anger, surprise, all repeated again and again, as if he’d completely lost control of his internal emotional thermostat. It occurred to me then: But of course, if Derek had any real control over himself, he wouldn’t be losing this job to begin with.

  I wanted to say, “Take all the time you need, Derek, to find another job,” but I knew instinctively that was wrong, so I said, “Two weeks. That should give you time to clear your desk.”

  He put his hand over his mouth and chin, as people do if they’re trying to keep from throwing up, but he nodded.

  I glanced at my watch, noticing as I did so that my hand was shaking.

  “I’ll go with you,” Derek said suddenly. His voice was still rough, edged with self-pity and resentment.

  I looked up at him, surprised. “To see the landlord?”

  He nodded again, though grimly. “Sure. Why not? If you hadn’t fired me, I’d be going along, right?”

  “Right. If you want to. Sure. Okay.”

  Shut up, I commanded myself, before you turn into a blithering idiot and start apologizing for his failings. It was going to be awkward riding over and back in the car with him, but I didn’t see how I could turn him down. Besides, he was good at site evaluation. What the hell, I thought wearily, let him earn some of that salary before he goes. I reached for my briefcase, then stood up behind my desk.

  “We’d better go,” I said.

  He looked at me, and for a moment we simply stared at each other. I was aware suddenly of everything that lay unfulfilled between us. Not just the job, but a friendship that never entirely took root, because we were employer and employee. Even a sexual attraction we had both suppressed for the same reason.

  I felt an impulse to put my arms around him, to hug him, and to say, “Derek, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want this to happen. I hoped it would turn out differently. I’m just so damned sorry.” But he’d always had a tendency to misinterpret any physical gesture from me, so I held back. I wish I hadn’t; I wish I had followed my instincts. But I was thinking, rather bitterly, If he doesn’t already know how I feel, then he doesn’t really know me, and that would render my regret pointless after all. What I didn’t consider, but should have, was: We don’t any of us really know how anybody else feels.

  Unexpectedly, he laughed, breaking the mood of regret, which maybe only I was feeling. He pushed himself up slowly from the chair. “Well, what the hell. Easy come, easy go.” The moment passed as if it had never been. In a voice that was near enough to his normal casual tone to deceive a stranger, he then merely inquired, “So what was that landlord’s name again, Jenny?”

  3

  “George Butts.” The landlord, a tall, thickly built man of about fifty-five, held out to me a hand as rough and gnarled as a tree stump. He was dressed in a tan workshirt and tan trousers, and he showed us an ingratiating smile in a face full of wrinkles and stubble. “You folks want to see the place?”

  “Please,” I said, having already introduced myself and Derek.

  We were standing outside the building, on Tenth Street, which was a residential block of New England saltbox-type houses, a few blocks south of downtown. There were maybe twenty houses on the block, most of them as gray and dingy-looking as the October clouds above us. The only exception to the predominant architecture was the one-story cement building we were about to enter through a double door. It was an odd-looking structure, sitting half out of the ground and covered partially—on top and down the sides—by dirt and grass, like an old sod house on the prairie. Instead of walking up stairs to reach the front door, we walked down a few steps.

  “It looks like a basement,” I said.

  “It is a basement.” Once inside, Butts flipped a switch to his left. Fluorescent lights revealed a short entryway leading into a large open room with a cement floor, cement walls painted industrial green, and insulated water pipes running floor to ceiling. Just to our left was a door marked, “Men,” and another marked, “Women.” Brown metal chairs had been folded up and stacked haphazardly against the wall in the big room, which also contained a blackboard, wiped clean, and a stage with curtains pulled to either side. “You want to shut that door, Mr. Jones? I don’t heat this place.”

  “Aren’t you afraid the pipes will freeze?” I inquired.

  “By the time the weather gets cold enough to freeze ‘em, they ain’t gonna be my pipes.” The wrinkles around Butts’s eyes closed into a wink, and he smirked at me. “Anyway, as I was sayin’, this is a basement, and with that dirt on top, the temperature pretty much stays the same all year round. Don’t take much to heat n’r cool ‘er. There was a church built it about fifteen years ago, never raised the dough to finish the job, so they just piled on the dirt and used it like you see here. Members kept dyin’ off, though, buncha crazy old holy roller coots, and they run out of dough to keep it up, so I bought it off ‘em. Kind of unique, ownin’ a basement, kinda hate to give the old girl up.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” I said.

  He caught my wry tone and grinned again.

  Derek and I glanced at each other, the first time we’d really looked at each other since we left the office, and I saw immediately that he was thinking what I was: MaryDell Paine was right, this would make a perfect recreation hall for her former mental patients. Right size, good facilities, great location.

  “Is there a kitchen?” I asked. In the Sunday school memories of my childhood, church basements always had kitchens. I recalled huge pots of coffee perking and great, steaming trays of hot rolls emerging from vast ovens. Sometimes I think the only thing I miss about religion is the potluck dinners.

  “Yeah, a big one, and a couple of other rooms off this hall.” Butts led us farther into the building, talking all the while, and jerking his head back now and then to wink at me over his shoulder. “You folks understand, I don’t give a good goddamn, excuse me ma’am, who buys this place. I ain’t got nothin’ against those crazy people. I suspect they ain’t no nuttier than some of my tenants
, and, anyway, ain’t their money that’s crazy. But I’m a businessman, and when somebody makes me a good offer, why I don’t want to be rude and refuse them, you see what I mean?”

  “Who made you an offer?” I asked.

  “Nordic Realty and Development Company.”

  That wasn’t the name of any of the Port Frederick real estate companies I knew, but it sounded vaguely familiar anyway.

  “Never heard of them,” Derek murmured. Now every time he spoke, which wasn’t often, he sounded hesitant and sulky, as if he weren’t sure he had the right to an opinion, as if he’d lost his self-confidence, knew it, and resented it. Nice work, Cain, I thought unhappily, you’ve just neutered Derek.

  “They’re outa state,” the landlord was saying.

  That was interesting—it was unusual for buyers from out of town—much less anyone from outside Massachusetts—to show any interest in Port Frederick properties.

  “What do they want it for?” I inquired.

  “Fifty-five thousand,” Butts said, and grinned.

  That wasn’t what I meant, and he knew it, but he’d given me some information I needed anyway. So, if we wanted this strange bunker, we’d have to do better than that fifty-five-thousand-dollar offer from the Nordic Realty and Development Company. MaryDell Paine had told us he was asking sixty-five thousand dollars for it, so maybe we could get it for fifty-eight or fifty-nine.

  By this time, we had arrived in the kitchen—it was all industrial stainless steel that was filthy but possibly operable. Depending on appraisal, it might indeed be a great buy for our purposes. I crooked my index finger over a greasy handle of an oven door, opened it, and peered in: no hot rolls, but it was spotless. All the dirt in this kitchen was on the outside. That shining stove interior gave me a pang—whoever had cleaned it must have loved this kitchen, and the church, and it must have hurt to see it fall into the warty hands of this old rascal. I closed the oven door, took a tissue from my raincoat pocket, and wiped the inside of my finger.