Breaking Out of Bedlam

by Leslie Larson

  I tipped my head to the side like a puppy. The calmer I stayed, the madder she got, until she worked herself into a class-A tizzy. I put my hand under the table so I could draw it out at the perfect moment. Carolyn was watching us now, her eyes as big as saucers. Krol scratched his bony head.

  Ivy leaned over the table and hissed like the viper she was. “Only you, Cora. Only you would fall for someone like that. You’re the laughingstock of this place. Everyone knows. Everyone’s talking.”

  I took my time. Sucked my teeth, shifted in my chair. Then I pulled my hand out, put my elbow on the table next to my plate, and rested my chin in the palm of my hand. The ring was on full display. I raised my eyes up to the ceiling and waited for things to take their course.

  Ivy was in high gear, but I stopped listening to her, or at least I stopped listening to the words, though her voice droned on like a buzz saw. Pretty soon she slowed down. She sputtered, then she coughed, then she choked like a car running out of gas. That’s when I let myself look at her. You know, you don’t often get that kind of satisfaction. The expression on her face was worth waiting for. It was one of the brightest moments of my life. The way I remember it, her eyes were crossed. Her tongue hung out of her mouth. Best of all, she was speechless.

  I wagged my hand from side to side to make the ring sparkle.

  She bolted up, staggered back, turned tail, and ran off across the dining room. That’s right, ran through the tables, dodging and weaving like a football star. Last thing I saw was her skinny ass flying out the door.

  “What was that about?” Carolyn asked.

  I chuckled. “Maybe nature was calling.”

  Carolyn laughed, too. “Looked like her pants were on fire.”

  You can guess what happened next. Wasn’t five minutes when here comes Bigbutt. Made a beeline for me. No sign of Ivy. Least I had time to finish my dinner.

  “Mrs. Sledge?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Where did you get that ring?”

  I held it at arm’s length and admired it, turning it to catch the light. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Bigbutt said through tight lips.

  “Family heirloom,” I told her. Course I didn’t say whose family.

  “Could you please get up and come with me?”

  I trotted behind her all the way to her office. She shut the door and commenced to questioning me, but I was like Jesus in front of Pilate. The less said the better. I didn’t deny nothing. Didn’t admit to nothing, either. I let her use her imagination, and it worked like a charm. Wasn’t long before she let me go. “We’ll take this up tomorrow,” she said, looking at her watch. Tuckered out, poor thing.

  I hadn’t been back in my room fifteen minutes when the phone rang. There’s Glenda, I told myself, and sure enough there she was, fit to be tied.

  “Mother, what is going on?”

  “Since when did you call me mother?”

  “They said you stole something.”

  “Better come get me, then. No telling what I might do next.”

  “That darned woman just gave me an earful. Says you are not cooperating at all. I can’t keep coming down there to straighten things out. What happened? What did you do this time?”

  “Like I said, I ain’t fit to be around these people. I need to be removed from the premises.”

  I kept up my Jesus act ‘til I wore her down to nothing.

  “Just say you didn’t take the ring. Tell them that man gave it to you and you didn’t know it was stolen.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I give up!” she finally yelled. “Do anything you want! I wash my hands of you!”

  “Hallelujah!” I shouted.

  The little click when she hung up sounded like a key unlocking a door. I did a jig in the middle of the rug, then I looked over toward the window. “My days here are numbered, Abel,” I called out. “I’m on my way!”

  THE EMPTY BED

  Life’s got a force all its own. After all the fighting I did—scratching, hollering, and begging—to get out of here, all to no avail, all of a sudden everything’s happening on its own, as if by magic. Nothing can stop it. I don’t have to lift a finger. All I do is sit back and watch it happen.

  Guess who’s the biggest help? Ivy! Just goes to show you. Turns out her family is important. Turns out they give plenty of money to this dump, God knows why, but once Ivy went crying to them they called Bigbutt and all kinds of hell broke loose. If that wasn’t enough, Ivy got all her fancy buddies in the exercise class to complain, too. The Palisades can’t unload me fast enough. Bigbutt and Glenda been burning up the phone lines trying to come to some agreement, but yesterday Glenda called and said I’m leaving here, going back home, at the end of next week. Home! I’m beside myself. I can’t believe I’ll be walking through the door of my very own house. Every five minutes I need to pinch myself.

  In the meantime, I been missing Vitus something terrible. Oh, I know what he did. I know how he played me, lied to my face. How he used me. Don’t matter. He was a revelation to my heart. Something was stopped up inside me. Meeting him was like pushing a nail through the crust in the nozzle on a glue bottle and finding there’s some sticky stuff, still good, left inside. The world came alive. I wanted to live again.

  I’m hankering for his smell, for the size and weight of him. For his voice and every little thing about him, right down to his toe-nails. I loved seeing him across the room, waiting for him to show up at my door at night, running into him by accident in the hall. Like I told him, I loved him pure, and no matter what he did or didn’t do, that feeling made me well. It brought me back to life.

  But enough of that. Guess what?

  I got it in my head that I needed something to remember Vitus by. It was a crazy idea, I know, all things considered. I couldn’t sleep on account of I’m so excited about getting out of here, so after tossing and turning ‘til one in the morning I finally got out of bed and put on my slippers and dressing gown. I got the little penlight Glenda gave me out of my bedside table and dropped it in my pocket. Go on, girl, I told myself. You’re getting kicked out of here anyway, so what’s the harm? I got my key and locked my room behind me and headed down the hall.

  I knew not to go by the nurses’ station at that hour, so I went the other way, past the Day Room. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m already starting to miss this place, thinking about all that’s happened here, the ways I’ve changed, and what I’ve been through. I’m proud of myself for coming out the other side. Anyway, I put my head in the Day Room and thought of those jigsaws with their missing pieces, the ugly plaid upholstery on the banged-up chairs, and all those dusty magazines—and damned if a soft spot didn’t open up inside me, like I was saying good-bye to an old friend. I couldn’t help but think of that first late-night trip I took up to Vitus’s room, when I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Now I prance like a pony. Look at you, I said to myself. Just look.

  I made it all the way to the elevator without seeing a soul. It was quiet as the grave up and down the hall, just the buzz of the lights and now and then a diesel bus outside. The elevator door slid open as soon as I pushed the UP arrow. It wasn’t until I got inside and the door slid closed again that I wondered what in the world I was doing.

  There I went again—down, down, down, to the bowels of the earth, even though it was one floor up. When the door slid open, I’d traveled back to the time when lunatics were chained to the walls of deep, dark dungeons. The empty corridor stretched out in front of me. A dark echo clanged in my ears. The smell of piss and sweat was thick. Down toward the end of the hall someone yelled, the icy sound of a nightmare.

  I stepped out in the hall and started walking.

  They slept with their doors open. Maybe it was a rule. So much snoring and groaning and grinding of teeth you never heard. I passed a room with the TV on, another where,
back in the dark, a man naked except for boxer shorts sat on a metal chair, elbows on knees, staring out into the hall. His eyes glowed. I scooted past. A couple of empty wheelchairs were parked at crazy angles against the wall. A gurney and a mop bucket on wheels. Watch your step, I told myself. All you need now is to fall and break a hip right when it’s time to go home.

  Vitus’s door was open like all the others. His roommate, Daniel, hadn’t shown his face in the courtyard since I don’t know when. He could be dead for all I knew. Somebody else might already be in Vitus’s bed. I snuck my head around the corner and blinked into the dark. Streetlamps from the parking lot gave a little light, enough for me to see the white sheets of the bed nearest me and the curtain pulled down the middle of the room. A machine was running. It sounded like a steam train just starting up, one long hiss then a short burst, over and over.

  I took a step inside the room. Somebody was in the first bed all right, lying on his back, wearing what looked like a gas mask over his face. A tube like from a vacuum cleaner came out the bottom. It shuddered in time to the machine. It was enough to make your blood run cold, believe me. When I leaned in for a better look, a jitter ran through the body. It was Daniel, though there was even less of him than there had been before. His shark teeth were covered by the mask and his eyes were closed.

  I could barely draw breath. I tiptoed past the foot of Daniel’s bed and paused right before I got to the curtain. Vitus’s TV was gone, but the dresser it had sat on was still there. I listened hard as I could, but all I heard was the breathing machine. I took one step, then another, and finally, holding my breath, I peeked around the edge of the curtain.

  The bed was empty. The mattress and pillows had been stripped and the dirty linens tossed in the middle of the bed. In the dingy light from the streetlamp you could make out the thin stripes running lengthwise down the mattress, the scoop in the middle where the padding was beaten down, a saucer-size stain up near the top. The headboard had iron rungs like the bars of a jail. There wasn’t another thing in that little space between the curtain and the window, not a chair or a calendar, not a slipper or a rubber band or a used Band-Aid. Only that banged-up, four-drawer dresser.

  I stood in the narrow space between the window and the bed. The breathing machine went on regular, and I wondered how Vitus slept with it going all night, whether he got used to it, maybe even got comfort from it. Just one more thing I didn’t know about him. I looked at that sad narrow bed and wondered if he laid there dreaming about Renato the way I dreamed about him. I laid across the mattress, pulled that pile of sheets toward me, and breathed in the smell. Him. Good-bye, my darling, I whispered as I buried my face in the linens.

  “Hey, what’re you doing over there?” a voice growled on the other side of the curtain.

  It was so close, I shot through the ceiling. I peeked around the curtain and there was Daniel sitting up in bed. He’d slid the mask off his face. His skin was the color of skim milk. He flashed his fangs at me.

  “I’m looking for something,” I said, trying to pull myself together.

  “What?”

  “None of your business.” I couldn’t help but stare. “Why you wearing that?” I asked, pointing to the gas mask. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Sleep apnea, girlie. Emphysema. This helps me breathe.” He shoved the mask toward me.

  “Well, put it back on before something bad happens!”

  “What about you?” He leered. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His lips drew back so far his whole skull seemed to show. “What’s wrong with you that you didn’t know about Vitus?”

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  I started for the door, but for some reason I turned around and walked back. I went to that dresser and yanked open the top drawer. Empty. The second one stuck. I jerked again, harder this time, so hard that when it gave, the thing inside rocketed across the bottom and slammed against the front of the drawer. I froze, my feet stuck to the floor. I held my breath and fished around til my fingers crept over the smooth facets, the sharp edges, the pointed end. There was no mistaking its hard weight, the perfect way it fit in my hand. Even in that light I could make out the crystal faces, the frosty scenes etched inside. I pressed it against my cheek, let it work its icy fingers into my molars and jawbone, passed it along my forehead, the bridge of my nose. I held it against the pulse in my neck, then I clasped it between my palms and squeezed tight, warming it with my grateful prayer.

  MY PRAYER

  Abel was waiting for me to wake up this morning. “You dodged a bullet there, Toad,” he said as soon as I opened my eyes.

  You think he’ll visit me once I’m back at the house?

  Today is my last day here at The Palisades. That’s right, Glenda is coming to get me this evening, going to drive me home.

  Guess who’s going to be there to greet me. Lulu!

  “She’s about to drive that family crazy,” Glenda said. “Chewed up a whole couch and won’t stop digging holes in the yard.” I can’t wait to throw my arms around that dog and bury my face in her fur.

  Can you picture me sitting at my own kitchen table, drinking coffee out of my own cup? Feeding Lulu at her spot by the washing machine? Climbing into my own bed at night and in the morning stepping out on the porch and looking out across the yard?

  There’s some blank pages left in this book, clean and white without a thing written on them.

  I got no more use for it. I am going home.

  I’m going to take all three books, seal them in an envelope, and write OPEN UPON MY DEATH on them. I’ll put them in my linen closet where I keep all my best pillowcases and towels, things that’s too nice to use. When I die and you come to clean out my house, you’ll find them. You can do whatever you want. I’ve pictured you reading them and finding out the truth. If you see any mistakes—spelling or wrong words—you can fix them. You have my okay.

  I PRAY NOW like I did when I was a little girl—not needing to understand. I ask for simple things. Let me not hurt. Let me not be hungry, or cold. Please keep my loneliness at bay.

  I used to pray to keep my ma and daddy safe, but that wasn’t no use. I prayed for gifts at Christmas and to win the school prize. I prayed to be slim, so no one would make fun of me. That didn’t happen, either. I asked Jesus to protect my kids. Look what happened.

  Now I have a new prayer. Heal my heart. Please, I ask. Calm its pain, soothe its scars. Keep it open, Lord, despite everything—reaching for life, ready to love.

  Acknowledgments

  Karen Stough generously lent her prodigious editing skills to an early draft of the manuscript. Nina Friedman’s intelligence and gift for spotting errors have improved my work, including this one, for decades. Michelle Echenique encouraged me to quit my day job. Her unwavering camaraderie and enthusiastic response to an early draft kept me on course. Angie Chau and Diana Ip scrutinized this book with writers’ eyes. Vicente Lozano sacrificed time from his own writing to proofread mine. Sandra Cisneros and the Macon-distas remind me of the reasons we write. My family provides the people and the places, the secrets and silences that are the bedrock of my stories. Their love cheers me on.

  Stuart Bernstein has been lavish with his encouragement and advice. My work and I have both been enriched by his talent, friendship, and nose for fun. Shaye Areheart opened the door once again and made a place for me at her table. Sarah Knight adopted this book and nurtured it as if it were her own. She challenged me to reveal the bones beneath the fat. Her vision, energy, eye for detail, and persistence improved the manuscript more than I could imagine.

  I began this book during a writing residency at Hedgebrook, where the generosity of the foundation and the kindness of the staff allowed me to dream big as I started my journey. The munificent award from the Astraea Foundation both kindled my self-assurance and gave me the means to devote myself single-mindedly to th
is book.

  Carla Trujillo wouldn’t stop pestering me to write this story. She welcomed the characters into our house and indulged their demands for months on end. Her laughter showed me I was on the right track. Her abundant praise, obstinate confidence in my abilities, and eagerness to conspire in the creation of this book made everything possible.

  Reading Group Guide for

  BREAKING OUT OF BEDLAM

  About This Guide

  In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this book—as well as the ending. If you have not finished reading Breaking Out of Bedlam, we respectfully suggest that you may want to wait before reviewing this guide.

  Questions for Discussion

  1. Cora and her siblings are named after gems. Abel’s siblings are named after biblical characters. What is the significance of names in the novel?

  2. Discuss the men in Cora’s life: Edward, Abel, Marcos, and Vitus. How are they similar? Different? What role does each play in Cora’s life? In the novel as a whole?

  3. Cora says, “One thing I learned from this whole mess is never to forget that life can slap you in the face any time it feels like it. For no reason at all, it can say guess what and the next thing you know everything has changed, everything that you thought was true and right and forever don’t mean squat.” When and how does Cora get slapped in the face? How does she react? What are the long-term effects?

  4. Why does Abel marry Cora? Why does he stay with her? What do they mean to each other? Why does he come back as a ghost to comfort and counsel her?

  5. Cora says, “My weight, or my size—like everybody likes to call it when what they mean is fat—has been the curse of my life.” What significance does Cora’s size have in the novel? How does it affect who she is and what happens over the course of her life?