Breaking Out of Bedlam

by Leslie Larson

  Right before morning I dozed in that fretful way you do when you been awake all night, dreaming scraps of crazy things and sweating in the sheets. I was so worn out, so nervous and agitated when breakfasttime came, I felt like I had to get out of that room, no matter how bad I felt. So I slid my teeth in and put on my scuffs and started down to the dining room. I didn’t bother running a brush through my hair or nothing.

  Sometimes I feel like I’m walking all the way to China, it’s so far and takes so long and all them nasty fluorescent lights in the hall reflect on the floor that’s white, too, everything white, but a dirty white—like snow that’s piled up beside the road. You see one horror after another walking by the open doors of people’s rooms. Nobody pays any mind to decency. I’ve seen bare-ass old men with their balls dangling down to their knees, and tattered dog-ear tits like socks with rocks in the end. It’s enough to turn your stomach.

  I liked to collapsed on the floor by the time I got to my table. I never been so glad to see a chair in my life. I sat there huffing and puffing, trying to catch my breath. When I did, I looked up and saw Poison Ivy’s eyes fixed on my face.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Last I heard, I don’t answer to you. If I want to go out there on the patio and hang upside down from a tree, it’s nobody’s business but mine. What’s it to you, anyway?”

  She’s got a way of staring that’s worse than anything she could say. It makes you feel like dirt. Her eyes flitted to my hair, then ran down the front of my housecoat. For a second I saw myself as she did, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. My housecoat was wrinkled from lying down in it, my terry cloth mules could use a wash, my toe-nails were long and dirty, my hair was matted flat against my head. I couldn’t help but run a hand through it.

  “You’re late getting here,” she said when she finished eyeing me.

  They already had their food, French toast from the looks of it. My stomach growled. “I had a bad night. I’m not at my best.”

  I didn’t want to look at her no more, and I sure didn’t want her looking at me. I tried to signal the boy to bring my food, but he was cleaning up one of the tables. Like usual, old Krol shoveled in food without showing the least inkling he knew anybody else was around. Carolyn stared off across the room.

  Ivy drilled me with her eyes. “Haven’t you heard?”

  One of the boys came out from the kitchen with a plate, and I waved him over. The French toast looked like a dirty dishrag, but it didn’t smell so bad, so I dug in.

  “Heard what?” I asked when I’d had a few bites.

  Ivy made me so nervous I dropped a big blob of syrup down the front of me. That made her snicker.

  “I’ll bet you never thought you’d be sitting here eating breakfast with the likes of me,” I said to get even. I waved my fork at the other two. “Them either.”

  “The police have been here,” she hissed. “There were five more robberies here last night. Five. Whoever it was came right into the rooms while the women were sleeping and stole them blind. Took their wallets and everything. Went through their drawers.”

  I made a point of chewing real slow. I looked off across the room like my mind was a million miles away. I sipped my coffee and wiped my lips. By that time she was clawing the table.

  “That so?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, isn’t that something?”

  “If you weren’t so doped up, maybe you’d care,” she huffed. “Coming in here like you just got out of bed. Don’t you have any pride? Don’t you care about anything?”

  I leaned across the table, looked straight into her face, and asked, “Exactly what is it about me you don’t like?”

  She sputtered. A line of red rose up from between her wrinkly old tits and spread up her neck. “They’re asking questions,” she rasped. “They’re going to get to the bottom of this. And when they do—”

  She stopped dead in the middle of the sentence like she’d been struck dumb. Her voice gargled in her throat and her eyes bugged, staring off across the room.

  The old bag is having a stroke, I said to myself. Maybe it’s a sin, but a thrill went through me.

  But no such luck. “I’ll be,” she muttered under her breath.

  I turned around to see what she was looking at. There was Vitus standing up at his table, waving to me! When I waved back, he grinned ear to ear, brought two fingers up to his lips like he was smoking, and gave me the thumbs-up.

  When I turned back to the table, Ivy looked like she was ready to heave her guts out on the plate. I laughed. I’d whupped her up one side and down the other. The two of us watched Vitus push in his chair and walk across the room. After he’d disappeared through the door, I couldn’t help but turn and grin into her face. I started forking up that French toast like I didn’t have a care in the world.

  “You’ll regret this,” Ivy said as she stood and pushed her chair in. “Take my word for it.”

  I smiled so nice. “This French toast is to die for.” I pointed at hers with my fork. “You should try it, Ivy. Put some meat on those poor old bones.”

  I WAS ONE of the last to leave the dining room. I dragged myself back down the hall, one foot in front of the other. The empty day stretched out in front of me, with maybe a light at the end if Vitus decided to visit. I was beat by the time I got back to my room. I pushed the door open and the smell I was getting used to came to greet me—the newish carpet, the disinfectant they used in the bathroom, and a faint whiff of gasoline fumes from the parking lot outside my window. Underneath it all was the smell of old people pushed into the same container, people fed and cleaned and cared for like they were all parts of one big body, a body with no past and no memories.

  I hadn’t gone but three steps when I stopped dead in my tracks. My spine started smoldering and an icy cold fluttered in my stomach. Someone was in my room, I could feel it. But that place was small and all I had to do was look around to see that everything was just how I left it. The bedclothes were tangled from me getting up. My brush, mirror, and medicine were untouched on my dressing table. The TV and armchair were right in place. My tiny bathroom was empty, so the only place anyone could be hiding was the closet.

  I held my breath and swung open the door. Nothing. Just my clothes hanging from the rod and my shoes in a pile on the floor. All right then, Cora, I told myself. You are imagining things. I used the bathroom, came out and straightened the bed, but couldn’t for the life of me shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. It hovered in the room, a quiver that made me check the closet again and look under the bed.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the long high window at the dingy sky. As my eyes trailed along the windowsill, I started getting the feeling that comes in a horror movie when footsteps get closer and closer. The dog figurines, the violet, the picture of my kids. Then it hit me smack in the face.

  My crystal. It was gone.

  EDWARD

  I got to put aside everything that’s happening here and make time for the things I really want to say. I thought needing to tell would get smaller and smaller as time went on, but turns out it’s just the opposite. This story, these things that happened to me, they won’t go away. The closer I get to dying, the more room they take up in my head. So after all this time—practically my whole life—of not breathing a word of it, I want to let the cat out of the bag. It might explain the way I am. A secret makes you lonely, knowing things nobody else does. It sets you off to the side, puts you in your own world.

  Not a soul knows, at least nobody living. Abel knew, of course, though there was a time I hoped he never would. My sister Ruby knew, her husband, Calvin Roberts, and my ma and daddy. And that man. Edward. He knew.

  Denton his last name was. Edward Denton. He lived in town, in Neosho, which was unusual at the time. Most people lived out in the sticks somewhere, worked in the mines or on farms, and just came to town whe
n they needed something. Edward’s daddy owned the drugstore on Main Street. There was a soda fountain there at the front, with six stools, red leather with chrome trim. A big fan twirled overhead, and no matter how hot it was outside, it always seemed cool in there. Even the flies seemed to stay away. They sold candy behind the counter, along with magazines and newspapers. Ruby and I lived to drink a Coke while we sat on those stools. We felt like queens the few times we did it, like we’d gotten as high as we could get.

  The first time I saw Edward was in the summer of 1931. I was seventeen years old and had just finished high school. My daddy went into town every other Saturday to get a haircut. Ruby and I talked him into letting us ride with him. We bumped over the potholes and ruts with our teeth clacking, but the two of us were excited as could be.

  We’d saved up a little money. When we pulled up in the middle of town, Daddy told us, “Be back here at the car in an hour, and stay out of trouble.” There was a clock on the tower of the bank right across the street. Our feet itched to be on their way.

  Like always, Ruby had a plan. “First we’re going to walk up Main, then down Jefferson, then back up First Street.”

  I knew better than to argue. We looked in the shop windows, then we went into Tweeds, the department store, and walked up and down the aisles. We strolled past the hotel and the bank, then stopped a minute outside the saloon, where the smell of liquor and the sound of men’s voices drifted out the door. It was hot. I couldn’t wait to get to Denton’s Drugstore, where I could cool off, rest my feet, and drink that icy Coke. But Ruby was a busybody. She had to stop and chat with everyone she ran into, while I stood there waiting like a bump on a log. Some things never change.

  We finally went to Denton’s. It was so bright outside, you could hardly see when you stepped through the door. The floor was white tile; the porcelain sink and shiny equipment made it seem even cooler and quieter. I felt my way onto a stool and heaved out a big sigh of relief. We were the only ones there.

  Edward was working behind the counter. We knew everyone around there, so somebody new got our attention. “Lookit him,” Ruby whispered while he stood with his back to us, pouring the Cokes. She jabbed her elbow in my ribs and jutted her chin at him. “Looks like the iceman in that outfit.”

  He was dressed in white from head to toe, cotton pants and a long-sleeved shirt starched stiff, with crisp creases ironed up the legs of his pants and down the length of his sleeves. A white hat shaped exactly like a business envelope, slit open on the long side, rode on his straw-colored hair. His legs were long and his butt so small it could fit in the palm of your hand. He turned around real careful, the Cokes filled to the brim. His black bow tie stood out against the rest of his uniform, like a letter printed on the whitest paper. His eyes were gray, like a lake on a cloudy day.

  “You from around here?” Ruby asked after she’d had a few sucks on her straw.

  I didn’t pay much attention. Ruby was always talking to boys. They liked her and she liked them. I bided my time looking at the candy on the wall behind the counter. I intended to buy some horehound before I left. I loved to feel it dissolve into syrup in my mouth.

  “I’s born here,” Edward said. He had a quiet kind of voice, deeper than you’d expect from the looks of him. By the sound of it I guessed he was a few years older than us. “This my daddy’s place.”

  “Your daddy’s Terence Denton?” Ruby said, so surprised her lips unlatched from her straw.

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t think he had no kids.” Ruby challenged him in a tone that said she knew more about it than he did.

  He shrugged in a way that said Ruby didn’t know everything.

  “I never saw you at school,” she said real sassy.

  “I went up in Joplin. Lived with my uncle. I just come down here in summer, on account of my ma being sick.”

  We all knew about Terence Denton’s wife. She was from back East somewhere and laid up in her house all day. No one knew what exactly was wrong with her, only that she was sickly, maybe in the head. In our minds it had to do with her being from the East.

  From the moment Edward set that Coke in front of me, I’d been dreading getting to the end of it, and I was halfway done by then, sucking it up the straw in little sips so just a tiny spurt came out. I had to fight myself every step of the way because, for the life of me, my lips were dying to slurp it down in one gulp. I worked that soda up and down the straw like a thermometer, nursing it, giving myself just a little at a time.

  Edward turned to me so sudden, I let the brown line of Coke fall all the way to the bottom of the straw.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me.

  “That’s Toad,” Ruby butted in. “She’s my sister.”

  “Your name Toad?” Edward asked.

  I was shy in those days, didn’t talk much. All I could manage was to shake my head.

  He didn’t turn toward Ruby or say nothing, but there was a twinkle in his eye that told me he was making fun of her. That tickled me more than I can say, because I’d never seen anyone stand up to Ruby, and I sure had never seen anybody pay more attention to me than they did to her. It surprised me so much I couldn’t say a word. I just sat there with the straw between my lips, smiling at him because he was smiling at me, smiling because we were sharing a secret.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he said.

  His dimples flashed the minute he smiled. With his blond hair, gold lashes, tawny skin, and the fuzz on his cheeks catching the light from the window at the front of the store, he looked like he’d been dipped in honey. You know something must have been happening for me to forget about that Coke. A good minute had gone by since I’d had a taste.

  My sister was having a conniption. “My name’s Ruby,” she chimed in. “I got two sisters and one brother. I’m the oldest.”

  Edward put his elbows on the edge of the counter and lowered his face so it was level with mine. That damn straw was still in my mouth, but my lips had lost their sucking power.

  “They call me Toad,” I stammered. “But my name is Cora.”

  “That’s more like it,” he said with a nod. His smell floated over the counter, like hay warmed by the sun.

  This here is a man, I said to myself. A full-grown man, talking to me.

  Ruby gave a huff. Her and Crystal had boyfriends up the yin-yang. They tossed them off and put them on to suit their moods. Ruby was already engaged to Calvin by then, so I don’t know why she was getting her bowels in an uproar, but she sucked that Coke down to the dregs in two seconds, then started fussing with her purse. She couldn’t stand someone else being the center of attention.

  “You want to go to the pictures next Saturday?” Edward asked me.

  Ruby made to hustle me off. She got her money out, paid (even paid for me), took me by the arm, and almost dragged me out of that drugstore—but not before I gave Edward my answer. I knew then that nothing was going to stop me from going wherever I wanted with him; it would take a tractor to pull me away.

  “You don’t know the first thing about that boy,” Ruby said when she got me outside. “You never seen him before in your life.”

  “I don’t need to know nothing,” I told her as I blinked out at the row of shops across the way, at the cars nosed into the curb and the shadows of the few trees darkening the pavement. Everything looked different. “I know that’s him. He’s the boy for me.”

  That’s how it started. So many times I’ve wondered how different my life might have been if me and Ruby hadn’t stopped in for that Coke, if I’d never laid eyes on that boy dressed in white.

  THE EMPTY ENVELOPE

  This purple pen’s been flying back and forth over the paper like I was in a trance. Would you believe I’m almost halfway through this book? But I got to interrupt the story I was telling. I got to write about Vitus and the things that’s been happening.

  Vitus did come over t
hat night my crystal went missing. He showed up at the sliding glass door with one of the pink gladiolas that grow by the gate where the gardener parks his truck. He handed it to me and said, “Well, Woozy. How are we tonight?”

  He was wearing linen pants. A natural color, wheat I guess you’d call it, loose fitting. Looking at him, you can’t believe he’s any older than fifty or sixty. He had on a powder blue shirt buttoned only halfway up. His chest is covered with silver hair, so soft looking you want to touch it. He’s got a little bit of a belly, but nothing you’d even notice if you weren’t looking real close. You’d think he was about to go on vacation someplace like Hawaii the way he was dressed.

  Marcos still hasn’t brought me my cigarettes. I got to thinking about him being in my room all the time and not mentioning the money I gave him and knowing where I keep things and, well, it’s natural for me to start suspecting him. But that’s another story. The long and short of it is that when I stepped through the sliding glass door with Vitus, there were only two cigarettes in my pack.

  We went to our bench and I told him about my crystal. He’d heard that things were turning up missing. They were talking about it up on the second floor where he lives, too. I told him how special that rock was to me, how it was the only thing my daddy had given me, how much comfort it was in hard times. I didn’t tell him what was hard about them, of course.

  Vitus listened real serious. “I’m going to help you find it,” he said when I was done. “You watch.”

  When we finished our cigarettes, I asked him if he wanted to come back to my room. No monkey business, you understand, but just for some company, so we could get to know each other better. He’s a perfect gentleman. So he came in and I let him sit in my armchair, and I pulled up the wooden chair I keep beside my dresser. I got out the dried fruit Glenda gave me and he ate some of that, then he saw the TV and asked if we could watch a little. The man who shares his room sits out in the courtyard sometimes. Name of Daniel. He’s pencil-thin, with a face so sunk in it makes his false teeth look huge, like he’s baring his fangs. He moves all herky-jerky, like a puppet. Anyway, Daniel only likes to watch sports. Vitus doesn’t care about things like that, so we watched Star Trek, then we watched the news, then he went home.