I picture Brandi buying that pink shirt at the same ritzy men's clothing store where she buys all Dad's clothes. Imagine her charging it on one of her 153 credit cards, and bringing it home to the loft. I can see Dad gushing over it, too-the man who used to say that Christmas shouldn't bring a single store-bought gift. I'll bet he practically slobbered all over that designer shirt that Brandi bought him, not even for Christmas or a birthday, but just because, and it probably cost more than groceries for his family for the week.
Now that Dad and Nell are through pointing and jabbing, their heads are bobbing yes, yes, yes.
"I agree," I hear Dad say. "One of my greatest regrets is that we didn't do that years ago."
I know what they're talking about-I may be a lot of things, but I'm no dope. And I feel like shit because, after these years of being in it together, I've done the unthinkable, the unforgivable. I've given her up. I've handed her off to the enemy.
They're going to send her away. And it's a selfish thought, I know it is, but I wonder-What will happen to me now?
I'm at the freaking breaking point. So I bolt-right out of my chair and the waiting room and the hospital itself.
But, come on, where did I think I was going? The Tempo's still at home since I came to the hospital in the ambulance. And it's way too dark now to even consider hoofing it. Pitch black sky and glittering stars above, a la Starry Night.
I hate, hate, hate that picture.
So I plop down on the sidewalk. And when I put my hands in my lap, I hear an old pack of cigarettes I'd forgotten about crinkle in the front pocket of my hoodie. I light up right there, even though the cigarettes are maybe six months old, stale as molded bread, and even though there's probably some ordinance against smoking so close to the hospital.
In front of me, the parking lot lights pop to life. A helicopter swarms overhead-probably some car accident victim, I think. What I wouldn't give to trade places with them, because anything would be better than knowing that I put my mother away, that I sent her to a fate worse than death. I've tied a box of TNT to all the promises I madeno pills, no doctors, no Dad, no Nell.
Boom.
Footsteps clicking on the sidewalk get me geared up for a fight. Just try it. You just try to take this cigarette and I will scratch your eyes out. I am so ready to kick somebody's ass. I dare you. Tell me-
But whoever it is doesn't say anything-just sits down beside me on the sidewalk.
When I turn, there she is, white hair and black glasses.
"This sure is some shitty coffee," Nell says, pointing at the cup she's gotten from the hospital vending machine. "But you can have some if you want."
"No, thanks," I say, hiding my cigarette and knocking it out against the sidewalk, because Nell would probably put me away for cigarettes, for all I know.
"No, no, don't mind me," Nell says. "You go on. I respect a girl who doesn't let some arbitrary rule like `must be eighteen to purchase' get in her way."
I shrug and pull another cigarette out of my dwindling pack. And because she's being cool about this, at least, I light one for her, too.
"Wow," she says. "March 15, 1982-last time I had one of those." She shakes her head and gives me this please, don't look, like I'm some sort of drug pusher, Come on, Nell. Don't be lame. Everybody's doing it. "What the hell," she finally says, and slips it from my fingers.
"You know," Nell says after a cloudy exhale, "I thought I had it all figured out when I was young. Freedom. God. I didn't need anybody's rules. Nobody gonna tell me what I could and couldn't do. Nobody gonna tell me I had to get married-so what if I was pregnant? What did that mean? I got married on my own terms. Because of love, not biology. Grace was four," she adds quietly, like a side note. "She was my flower girl." Her eyes get this funny, faraway, inward look, until she shakes her head and brings her thoughts back on track.
"And so what if I used to like to smoke every once in a while?" she asks. "What if," Nell confesses, leaning in to whisper in my ear, "what if, even, I liked a little weed? Really," she goes on, her voice gathering strength, "so what? I mean, so what if I decide to drink my lunch? So what if I eat a whole chocolate cake for dinner, nothing else? Who am I hurting other than me, right?"
I nod, watching as she takes another drag on her cigarette. After a few minutes, she takes off her glasses. Her eyes are all watery and her nose is turning red, even though it's really not all that cold outside tonight. "Only maybe I did hurt somebody else," she says. "Maybe the way I lived, maybe it was wrong. Maybe I did something..."
We sit there a few more minutes, just sit and smoke.
"She said we were in it together," I finally tell Nell. "She depended on me, you know? Because she didn't want to be medicated anymore, like Dad made her. Because she-"
"God, we used to fight," Nell interrupts. "I never fought with anyone the way I fought with her. Not even my own parents. I slapped her one time-not one slap, but once, when I was mad, I started slapping her until her cheeks were bright red. Flaming. Because I knew it-she hadn't been diagnosed yet, but I knew there was something about her-it wasn't just adolescent bullshit. And she blamed me, you know, for the way her dad died. Blamed me-we were in the midst of this awful tug of war. Her wanting me to tell her I'd done something wrong, that I'd made a mistake with her dad. Me wanting to make her less like him. Because we knew, both of us, what was happening. I knew. And she must've thought I was being so cruel that day when I started slapping her, but I was so scared, so desperate, and it was like I thought I could beat it out of her.
"Beat it," she repeats, shaking her head, spitting a chuckle like it's the most harebrained thing she's ever heard, even to this day. "Like dust out of a rug."
She takes another drag and shakes her head. I remember how angry I was at Mom for clipping the strings in the Ambrose Original, and I know exactly how easy it would be to lash out in frustration.
"I don't think I was supposed to be somebody's mother. I'm just-toxic." Nell shudders.
I light another cigarette for myself and hand another to Nell, too. Because we're laying it all out on the line, I say, "I guess at least I know what to expect when I go nuts."
"Oh, please," Nell says. "You're not going nuts."
I'm offended at how easily she can dismiss this, brush it away like it's a gnat. "Everybody in my family goes nuts."
"Thanks a lot," Nell says.
"You know what I mean. Come on-my mom and my grandfather. You can't deny that it runs in the family."
"Yeah, well, so does heart trouble," Nell says, snatching the cigarette out of my hand. She drops it to the pavement and snuffs it out with her shoe. But she keeps hers burning.
"Oh, Aura," she sighs after our quiet grows cumbersome. "You're the sanest person I know. Ever since you first set foot in my studio-I knew exactly who you were. God, you look so much like your mom did at your age. You're almost her exact double. Except for the eyes. I've seen madness up close, twice, you know," she says softly. "It doesn't have you."
Quiet settles between us. I'm not sure how Nell can make such a damned sweeping statement. It almost seems like a stereotype. All women are bad drivers. All black people can dance. All granddaughters are safe from mental illness.
"I admire you," she says. "I really do. You should be proud of yourself, truly. You took good care of her."
"Big deal."
"It is a big deal. You took far better care of her than I did, and I'm her mother. You did it, Aura. You did good, hon. Real good."
"What good did it do her?" I scream. Oh, here we go, now I'm exploding. "Big deal, Nell. I took care of her. For what? So you can put her away? I know you're going to put her away."
"What were you going to do, Aura? Were you just going to sit in that house with her the rest of your life? You'll be graduating before you know it. Were you going to give up on college? Or were you going to take her with you? Set up your mentally ill mother in your dorm room?"
Bull's-eye for Nell, but there's no way I'm going to tell her she's right. "Yo
u can't just lock her away like you did her dad!" I scream. "She's Grace Ambrose, born April 3, 1970. She is your daughter, and she is still alive."
"Whoa-" Nell says, holding her hand up. Her cigarette has burned all the way down to the filter but she hasn't noticed, and when it starts to singe her fingers, she just drops it onto the parking lot, lets it roll away. She keeps her eyes on me the whole time.
I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have somebody look at me. Really look, and see me.
"I'm not shutting her away, locking her up, no key. I'm not institutionalizing her, Aura."
"You're not?" I say. I'm blubbering, just like a little kid, like some baby.
"No-honey. No. A short-term care facility."
"Short-term," I repeat. "She's coming back?"
"Yes-yes."
I stare at her, mouth dangling open. How is this possible? How can this be? She comes back? She comes back?
"How have you been managing to juggle school and your mother?"
I shrug.
"Well, that's the first thing that's going to change," Nell says. "I'm going with you to that school of yours tomorrow, and I'm fixing everything. Get you right back on track, you hear me?"
I tug my sweatshirt over my hands, like Katie Pretti in English class.
"And after we're done there, you can help me move my elliptical trainer."
"Move your-what?" My brain is spinning.
"My trainer. I can't go a day without it. I've got a bird, too. You like birds? Nasty creatures, birds. Worse than men, sometimes. 'Course, if I get too sick of the bird, I can always roast it."
I keep staring at her, bewildered.
"Look, I'm not going to leave you alone while your mother's gone. I know I haven't been any kind of a grandmother to you, but I think it's high time I started, all right?"
"High time-"
"I don't snore, I make a mean veal parmesan, and I even promise not to make fun of your mother's decorating."
"So you're moving in," I say slowly, though it doesn't seem real.
"Temporarily. Unless, of course, you'd rather stay with your father." She wrinkles her nose with disgust.
"Mom'll never go for this," I say.
"Oh, yes, she will. She's not exactly capable of arguing right now, anyway. And when she is-" Nell shakes her head. "I may have been out of the picture awhile, but I've known her a very long time, Aura. I'm going to make her see things my way. This time, I'm not going to slink away."
I stare into Nell's cloudless blue eyes, not wanting to scream for the first time in what feels like forever. Is it possible? I start to wonder. Do things really work out in the end? I get the weird feeling that maybe, even in the midst of a psychotic break, Mom was right about something. Maybe we do pedal the earth with our feet-and maybe, just maybe, mine have made the whole world start to turn around.
Many family members of the clinically cuckoo say they wish they d known that feelings of shame and guilt were normal.
'm very disappointed in your behavior as of late, Aura," Fritz says as soon as Nell and I step into her office that looks, this morning, like the inside of a cheerleader's bedroom after a slumber party: pom-poms all over the floor, red and white cheering sneakers on top of her filing cabinet, and about fifty soda cans strewn all over her desk and the chairs. The only difference between this scene and a real cheerleader's bedroom is that the cans don't say diet all down the sides. A giant banner stretched across the length of her office screams CONGRATS CRESTVIEW!
FIRST PLACE IN SQUAD SHOWDOWN 8 YRS. INA ROW!
At least someone had an oh-so happy-dappy weekend.
"Ve-wy disappointed, Auwa," Fritz says, this time around an extra large bite of her breakfast biscuit. She balls up the McDonald's wrapper and tosses it toward the trash can for a three-pointer. She misses.
She slurps the last watery drops out of an enormous plastic cup-the kind you can pick up at any Kum & Goand instantly, I'm thinking about home. Because there are about a hundred of those cups in my kitchen cabinets. I guess some people really do have matching juice glass sets, but Mom and I are more like gas station plastic freebies we rinse out and reuse.
God, I miss her.
"Sorry," Fritz says to Nell, once she finally swallows her enormous ball of McCud. "Just finishing up breakfast." She grabs her second Big Gulp of Dr Pepper and starts sucking away at the straw to wash it all down. Glares at me so hard that I swear I can actually see the grease from her last three Egg McMuffins (the wrappers are all balled up on her desk) slide right into her frown wrinkles.
As any of the cheerleaders that Mrs. Fritz sponsors would say, Ick.
"Leaving campus again with no permission," Fritz chastises. "Taking a non-excused extended absence."
I'm already uncomfortable, because Nell has insisted that I not wear my jeans, like I wanted. She's given me a pair of green plaid slacks and an enormous red jasper neck lace, declaring all the while that green and red are, in fact, complimentary colors and go perfectly well together (What's the matter with you? You should know this. Didn't your mother the painter teach you anything at all?), and telling me that I should never approach any kind of superior looking like a little piece of fluff.
"Fluff gets flicked off of the lapel of a suit jacket," Nell told me. "Don't get flicked away, Aura."
I catch my reflection in the glass panel in Fritz's door, surprised again at how nicely my hips fill out Nell's pants. And I actually like the way her blouse fits my cantaloupe-sized boobs. It crosses my mind that maybe I really wouldn't mind tossing all my oversized hoodies, but I still feel a little silly in the getup. Like I'm a little miniature Nell-all I need to do is bleach my hair stark white and we'd be twins.
And here Fritz is, glaring at me like the fluff Nell warned me not to be. I want to say, See? I could have worn my silly old jeans for this shit, but I don't. I slump down into a chair and think, Great. Here we go, here we go ...
"Excuse me?" Nell snaps. "You're disappointed in her?"
Her tone makes me slide right back up, a smile slowly spreading across my cheeks. Well, well, well. What do we have here ...
"Do you have any idea what this girl has been through in the past few weeks?" Nell asks. "Have you any idea what she's been through these past sixteen years?"
Fritz gulps. "Ms.-Ms. Ambrose."
"Zellers," Nell corrects. "Aura's grandmother."
"School policy dictates that I deal only with a guardian or parent-"
"I am the guardian," Nell says.
"But why-where-why-" Fritz stammers.
"Because her mother has been committed to a shortterm care facility."
"Committed?"
Nell nods. "For schizophrenia."
"For-what?" Fritz asks, picking up a heap of manila folders to expose an entire Pizza Hut box. "What? What?"
"Don't tell me you weren't aware of her mother's condition," Nell snaps. "She was diagnosed back in 1988."
"No-this sort of thing-not as though Aura has the condition herself-our concern-not parental afflictions-" Fritz blubbers.
"It should be in her permanent record, shouldn't it?" Nell asks.
Fritz scrambles to her feet and rushes to a beat-up metal filing cabinet. She opens a drawer (which I half expect to be full of crushed KFC buckets) and pulls out a file. She carries it to her desk, her pantyhose-packed thighs zipping against the material of her businesswoman skirt, and opens it up. "No-see here? On the first day of school, when asked to fill out her in-case-of-emergency card, Aura didn't indicate-"
Nell shoots me a glare. I shrug. Why would I think it was any of their business? Why would I want the faculty's busybody noses stuck so far up in my face, I could see the black hairs poking out their nostrils?
"Aura has actually been her mother's primary caregiver since her parents' divorce three years ago," Nell sighs. "I regret that I wasn't there to help, I'll admit that. But I'm here now. And at least Iwas there when Aura reached out. It's my understanding that Aura was in this very office talkin
g to you when her mother's condition was deteriorating. You have a very bright student in your office-a student who is suddenly cutting class-"
"Yes, but Aura began to make it something of a habit, leaving school grounds. On several different occasions-"
"My dear woman," Nell says (and I love that she's tossed such a condescending dear at Fritz, I love it, I love it), "it seems to me that you had ample opportunity to find out what was going on in Aura's home. Why was there no attempt to contact Mr. Ambrose? Hmm? A call from your office surely would have alerted Aura's father that there was a problem. Perhaps, if you had placed that simple phone call, Aura's mother would not have reached the point of needing hospitalization."
Fritz just gulps and-I wish I had a camera-folds her hands over her desktop and nods.
"I believe that it's high time you started digging a little deeper to find out what's going on with some of your students," Nell says. "It shouldn't be that much work; you only have to deal with last names beginning with A, B, or C-and eat all day, apparently."
Fritz flinches.
"I want an office runner sent right this minute to collect the assignments Aura's missed the past few days. She will start back to class full time tomorrow morning. With," she adds, tossing a look my way, "a good portion if not the vast majority of her assignments completed."
Fritz just works her mouth like she's dying for another gulp of her Dr Pepper, but is afraid to reach for it in front of Nell. Instead, she jumps to her feet and races into the attendance office to find a student worker who will walk my class schedule and bring down my assignments, every last one. As she moves through the hallway outside, I can hear her huffing and puffing, surely because she hasn't had this much exercise in centuries.
Nell rolls her eyes at me. "Incompetent cow," she mutters.
And in that moment, I begin to fall head over heels in love with Nell Zellers.
Schizophrenia is not a preventable disease. It is a bullet traveling from an already fired gun.
e have to haul Nell's elliptical trainer through the back door in four different pieces, the damn thing's so heavy. But the trainer's not the only thing I get stuck lugging in. Nell brings her favorite saucepans and her framed Diego Rivera signed print and about nine tons of clothes. Sweaters, jackets, slacks galore. And heels-red, blue, tweed, patent, suede, toeless. I'm about to tease herWho do you think you are, Imelda Marcos? But she seems so serious about needing it all, I just head back out to her Toyota, wondering how so much crap could have fit into such a tiny little car.
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