Breaking Out of Bedlam

by Leslie Larson

  He shook his head and sighed. “All right. One last time, because we are soul sisters.” He looked out over the cars. “But let’s get away from this place. Come on, over here.”

  He dragged me across the parking lot, all the way past the strip with the trees, over to the main road. I was huffing and puffing by then, fighting to get my breath.

  “I can’t take another step,” I said once we got to the sidewalk. “I’m fit to die.”

  “There’s a bus stop. Let’s sit down.”

  Soon as we sat down on the wooden bench, a bus pulled up and the people who were waiting got on. The bus pulled away, leaving us in a cloud of stink. The back of the bench had an advertisement for kids who needed adopting. There were three of them—a brown one, a black one, and a white one—with the words TAKE US HOME! painted across the top.

  I was so winded I couldn’t smoke. I couldn’t even talk. I sat there getting my breath and watching all the cars speed past. The sun had come out but the streets were still wet, and the cars sprayed a mist on our faces. The wet bench seeped into my backside, but I was so glad to be sitting I didn’t care.

  “You’re going to get that white shirt dirty leaning against that nasty wet bench,” I said when I could finally talk again.

  He stared with wild eyes at the traffic like he might throw himself into the middle of it. He felt around his chest ‘til he found his pocket, pulled out his cigarettes, lit two, and handed one to me.

  We smoked without talking for a few puffs. Another bus pulled up and opened its doors. We shook our heads. The doors slammed shut and it pulled away.

  “You should have seen this place fifty years ago,” I said. “Nothing but marsh and a few little farms.”

  He wrapped them big lips around that cigarette. The backs of his hands were furry as a badger. After what seemed like forever, he said, “They found some of the stolen things in Renato’s locker.”

  “Why, that little—”

  Marcos held up his hand. “He says they were gifts.” He flicked his cigarette butt out into the street.

  I was hoarding mine, sipping it down to the nub.

  “He is in nursing school. Only one semester left. He will be an RN and can get a good job anywhere he wants. He takes care of his mother and sister, who’s still in college.”

  “I had no idea!”

  “Why do you think he’s at The Palisades all hours of the day and night? Working hard, trying to hold it all together until he finishes school?”

  A big truck blasted its horn. I jumped a mile. Marcos mumbled a curse in Spanish. “Throw that away,” he said, nodding at my cigarette. It had burned down to nothing in my hand. “They found out about me and Renato.” He gave me a look.

  “I didn’t tell them. I swear I didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Maybe they knew all along. Maybe everyone knew. I don’t care.”

  “But I didn’t tell. You have to believe me. It wasn’t me.”

  “They think I stole those things and gave them to Renato.”

  “Well, did you?”

  Marcos lit two more cigarettes. He handed me one without looking at me. “No,” he said so low I could barely hear him.

  “You sure?”

  He gave me a look, halfway between steamed and hurt. “What do you think, Cora? Would I do something like that? I thought we knew each other.”

  “Then why are you taking the blame?”

  He waved me off. “Once they make up their minds, there is no use arguing. It makes no difference whether I stole those things or not.”

  “The hell it doesn’t. Did you or didn’t you?”

  “I already gave you my answer, Cora.”

  “If you didn’t do it, just tell them.”

  “They found stolen jewelry in my locker, too.”

  What a bombshell. For a minute I was speechless. “Well, how’d it get there?” I said when I found my tongue.

  Marcos shrugged. “I don’t know. Someone put it there.”

  “You know, Marcos. I hate to say it, but this is sounding more and more far-fetched. Did that boy accuse you of giving him those things? Is he trying to save his own pretty ass?”

  Marcos shrugged. “He only said they were gifts. He won’t say who gave them to him.”

  “Is he lying? Who could have given them to him?”

  “You know Renato. Everyone is in love with him. It could be anybody.” He took a puff. “Or not.”

  “Well, just say it ain’t you! They can’t fire you for nothing!”

  “I already quit, Cora. Let them think it’s me. I don’t care.” He rubbed that sad face of his with both hands. “It’s best for me to leave, anyway. Get out of here. It’s painful to see him, to watch from a distance. It’s not good for me.”

  I don’t care about the facts. Just looking at Marcos, knowing how he treated me, made me almost sure it wasn’t him. “But it ain’t right! Why should you take the blame if you haven’t done nothing?”

  He stopped looking at the sidewalk long enough to meet my eyes. “If they think he accepted them from me without knowing they were stolen, he can stay at The Palisades long enough to finish school. It will be my gift to him. My last one.”

  I couldn’t believe my own ears. “Why in the world would you give him that when he did you so wrong? And he could have stole them himself for all you know.”

  “This is love, Cora,” he said softly. His beautiful smile spread across his homely face. “Love makes its own rules.”

  The half-smoked cigarette fell out of his hand and lay there by the toe of his shoe. I was dumbstruck. All I could do was stare at that smoking butt until a drop fell on the pavement beside it, then another, and another. Lord Almighty, he was crying. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the tears fell thick and fast, splashing on the gum-scarred sidewalk.

  I couldn’t think of one word to say, so I laid my hand on his back between his shoulder blades. He didn’t make any sound, but I could feel him jerk. I thought how many times his hands had worked my back, thumping and pounding, jarring loose all that mess in my lungs so I could breathe a little easier. It was his job, true. He got paid for it, but he didn’t have to touch me the way he did, so giving. I felt it every time.

  “Listen here, Marcos,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me over the traffic. “I need to tell you something. You been a true friend. You showed me a kindness you didn’t have to. You might not know it, but it made all the difference in me getting well. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now with the cars blowing past me and this wet bench soaking my ass.”

  His poor eyes were blood-red when he turned toward me. “Thank you, Cora. Thank you.” He pulled my hand off his back and kissed it, three times. “You are my queen.”

  “You are a giver, Marcos,” I said, tearing up myself. “You just can’t help yourself.”

  Saying that gave me a full feeling, like I just ate a five-course meal. When we stood up, I grabbed Marcos and pulled him tight against me, never mind all those cars driving by seeing my wet behind and thinking, Look at that poor old fat woman peed her pants and that man is hugging her anyway.

  “Where are you going?” I panted between steps as we walked back across the blacktop. “What are you going to do?”

  “An agency will hire me to make home calls. They’re always looking for someone. I won’t have anybody breathing down my neck while I do my work.”

  “Well, that’s real nice,” I said, though—truth be known—it made me jealous as hell to think of Marcos taking care of other people, laughing and talking with them, maybe even calling them my queen and watching soap operas on their TVs, while he never laid eyes on the likes of me again. “I guess you got your life all laid out,” I said when we were almost to his car. “Guess your time here with me was nothing but a fart in the wind.”

  “I will remember you in my prayers, Coralita,” he
said, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “I will never forget our time together.”

  “Don’t come no farther.” I gave him a little shove toward his car. “I can go the last few steps myself. Go on home, now. I love you, sugar. Thank you for all you done.”

  I blew him kisses as I walked away.

  Those hound-dog eyes rested on me one last time before he threw me a kiss and went to his car. I’d gone about ten paces when I turned and called out, “Say there, Marcos! My crystal didn’t show up, did it?”

  He shook his head. “No sign of it, Cora.”

  Did he do it? Was it him, my Marcos? I racked my brain all the way back to The Palisades. I was beat by the time the front door swung open and the smell I know so well now, Lysol and piss, hit my nose. The air was hot and close. The nutcase with the leg bracelet was still in the lobby, his sneaky eyes ogling the door.

  “Why’d you come back?” he called out when he saw me. “You crazy?”

  “Must be,” I said as I marched past him.

  MY HANDS SHOOK so bad when I got to my room, I could hardly fit the key in the lock. I know exactly what I would’ve done in the olden days, and don’t think I wasn’t tempted. The only way I could resist those pills calling out from my drawer was to crawl straight into bed and pull the covers over my head.

  I slept in fits and starts all the way ‘til dark. Didn’t bother getting up and going for supper, just laid there wondering about Marcos, trying to put two and two together and figure out if he was guilty or not. If so, what drove him to it? Maybe he loved that boy so much he didn’t care what happened. How’d he pay for all that gold that was always hanging off him? Where’d he come from and what was he doing here? Lots of questions and no answers.

  Something else was bothering me. That gift basket. Sometimes when you’re halfway between sleep and waking little things blow up and bother you more than they should. The long and short of it is I tossed and turned late into the night. My mind was troubled, swirling like a maelstrom. Must have been about midnight I fell asleep.

  I woke up right before it started to get light, about six or so. Reason I know is I heard a bus and they don’t start running ‘til then. I must have dozed off one more time, a light sleep, and the dream I had was so real I remember every detail.

  Me and Vitus were at the altar. We said our vows and when it was time to kiss, I turned to him and he was wearing a veil! You crazy thing! I told him. The groom doesn’t wear a veil. I raised it up to kiss him, and who should be underneath but my dog Lulu! The whole congregation burst out laughing, and when I turned around I saw everybody was from Vitus’s country—men in ragged black suits with funny scarves around their necks and women wearing babushkas on their heads. Lots of them were missing teeth. They were jabbering in their own language, laughing and clapping and generally raising hell. I looked around for a friend or someone from my family, but I didn’t see a soul I knew and that filled me with the biggest sorrow, a kind of homesickness in the pit of my stomach. It was too late, though. I’d said my vows. And, as luck would have it, when I turned back to Vitus, Lulu’s face was gone and his was back. He was still wearing that veil, though, and missing teeth like the rest of them.

  THANKSGIVING

  I feel like something’s coming to a head here at The Palisades, the wind picking up like it does before a storm. With it blowing all around me, it’s a comfort to cast my mind back to the past. It calms me, puts me in another place. For so many years I did everything in my power not to think of it. The more I write this story the better it feels, almost like it happened to somebody else.

  RUBY WAS THE one who said her name right out in the open, after so long a time. Her and Calvin came out from Neosho to spend Thanksgiving with us. We’d been living in San Diego a good ten years by then. They liked being out there by the ocean—to them it was a vacation. Turned out Ruby couldn’t have no kids, which is why she built that real estate empire of hers, out of frustration, and why she loved my kids so dear. She spoiled them rotten, brought them piles of toys for Christmas, things Abel and I could never afford. She took them to ball games, out to lunch for hot roast-beef sandwiches, loaded them in her Lincoln and took them to the drive-in movie, where she bought them anything they wanted at the snack bar. They loved her to pieces, and who could blame them? It was a twenty-four-hour party when she was there.

  That was after the war, when we were living in temporary housing they’d built for all the people who’d come to work in defense. Calvin and Ruby slept on a foldout couch in the living room. She was hooked on those pills by then—like me, only worse, because every day her and Calvin downed a quart of gin between them, no sweat. She wore tinted glasses so you couldn’t see her eyes. If she ever took them off, her pupils were big as silver dollars. She walked around with her hands stretched out in front of her like a sleepwalker, feeling along the walls. But I’m no one to talk, and besides, I’m getting off track.

  We were all there on Thanksgiving Day, getting ready to sit down to dinner. Two of Abel’s brothers who had moved out there to San Diego were there with their wives and kids, so we had a full house. I’d put all the leaves in the table and set a door on a couple of sawhorses for the kids. People were stirring around, finding their places, and pulling out chairs. I was fussing with the turkey, trying to siphon the grease out of the roasting pan so I could make gravy.

  It was hot in there with the oven blazing. I was sweating. Everyone was talking at once. The littler kids were racing around the table. All of a sudden it got quiet. I didn’t pay any attention at first because I was still wrestling that bird, but I heard, or thought I heard, Ruby say, “She died right around this time. She would have been twenty years old this year.”

  The hair raised up on my arms and the back of my neck. Every part of me came to attention, but I told myself I must be hearing things. Ruby would never say that, not in a thousand years. Still, it was awful quiet in there. The turkey was nice and brown on top. I sucked up another baster of juice and squeezed it into the skillet.

  “Who?” Glenda said. She was a teenager, but she was still sitting at the kids’ table. She’s always been the kind who wants to know what the adults are up to.

  “Alice,” Ruby called over from the main table.

  That word ricocheted from the walls of the kitchen like a bullet. It bounced off the Wedgewood stove where I was standing with the turkey, flew over to the sink where the dishes were piled high, rattled the silverware and glasses on the table, and smashed up against the window in the back door. I spun around. People at the table looked stricken, like someone had done something shameful, come to the table naked or blasted a big fart. Some stared down at their empty plates, others had their eyes fastened on me, waiting to see what I’d do. I looked at Ruby. She was already crocked, her glasses cockeyed, her head lolling around. But the look on my face sobered her up real fast.

  I was hot already, but I got hotter, like someone turned the thermostat up in my body. Sweat rolled down both my sides into the elastic of my underpants. It felt like bees were swarming in my chest, hundreds of them beating their wings inside me, buzzing, ready to take off. When they were about to tear open the middle of my chest and spill out in a black cloud, Glenda piped up again.

  “Who’s Alice?” she said, innocent-like.

  Something barely balanced inside me, a million glasses stacked in a shaky tower, came crashing down, shattering one after another. I screeched and slammed the roasting pan down on the counter. That bird—and it was a big one, eighteen or twenty pounds—jumped in the air, and floated there a minute like it might flap those roasted wings and fly out the window before it came down with a splat in the pan, spraying grease all over the front of me.

  The floodgates opened. I couldn’t hold nothing back. Tears came streaming and next thing I knew I was crying at the top of my lungs. A few people gasped. Chairs scooted on the floor. I headed for the kitchen door, threw myself against it, and stumbled out onto
the porch. I had to get away. Last I heard as I ran down the steps was Abel yelling, “Let her go! Let her go!”

  I staggered out over that bumpy crabgrass, past the rusty old swing set and the patch of ivy that kept coming up no matter what I did to it. I lurched all the way out to the back of the lot where the tumbleweeds and wild oats grew, and wrapped my fingers in the diamonds of the Cyclone fence. I lowered my head against it and cried my heart out. It took me aback that I was so affected. I just couldn’t believe I was sobbing like that, but I was, and there was no stopping it. It shamed me that I was acting like that in front of all those people, but just when I got control of myself, a new wave of bawling washed over me.

  I was finally starting to settle down when here comes Ruby picking her way out over the grass, her hands out in front of her like she might slip on ice, liable to fall and crack her skinny ass. She was panting by the time she came up beside me and put her arm around my shoulder and laid her head against my face.

  I could smell the booze on her breath.

  “Listen here, Toad. Get on back in there. Everybody’s waiting on you.”

  “I ain’t going in there,” I sniffled. “I can’t.”

  “Now, don’t you give me that. Yes, you can.”

  She’d put on fresh lipstick to come out there. It was deep red, running just outside those thin lips of hers. Ruby still looked good, way prettier than me, and—except for a potbelly—she was still slim.

  “Tell them go on and eat,” I said. “Don’t wait for me.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Toad.” She was trying to be nice, on account of the wrong thing she’d done inside.

  “Tell them to go on home, then!” I said, stamping my foot. “The party’s over.”

  Ruby chuckled. We’d gone to Newberry’s the day before and bought little pouches for our cigarettes. Mine was a deep red satin and Ruby’s was plaid corduroy, with a little pocket for the lighter. They snapped open on top like a change purse. She took hers out and tried to pinch up a Tareyton with her long nails, painted to match her lipstick. Her hands shook so bad she couldn’t home in on it. Just when I was so impatient I about snatched them out of her hand, she managed to pull out two cigarettes and light them with her big silver lighter.