Lisa, Bright and Dark

by John Neufeld

  Lisa,

  Bright and Dark

  A NOVEL BY

  John Neufeld

  We didn’t need to know why it was happening. It was happening…

  M.N. had been bent over as I came in, with her head sort of under the desk altogether, doing something I couldn’t see. When she heard me, she looked up terrified, and motioned me to be quiet. I was. Then I moved forward a little.

  “Stop!” M.N. whispered hard. “Just don’t come any closer!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” M.N. hissed. “Just get out of here and get the nurse, fast!”

  “But what—”

  “Will you please just do what I tell you!” M.N. nearly screamed.

  Being curious and a little stubborn, I wasn’t going to go until I knew what was happening. I walked on tiptoes up to Mr. Milne’s desk and looked under it.

  There was Lisa, on her hands and knees, doubled over, busily poking a pin into her wrist—neatly, rhythmically, precisely, watching tiny drops of blood peep out of each hole she punched.

  For my father, without whose understanding and patience there would have been neither Edgar Allan nor this book.

  “Just make yourself comfortable and keep talking,” M.N. said to Lisa. “Say anything that comes into your head.”

  But saying that to Lisa Shilling was like asking the ocean, as a favor, to turn cold in February.

  For Lisa couldn’t help saying anything that came into her head. On her good days, Lisa was as bright and natural as her friends; on her dark days, she was depressed, withdrawn, and deep in conversation with her “English voices.”

  Lisa Shilling, sixteen, was losing her mind.

  M.N. Fickett, the first of Lisa’s friends to realize Lisa’s dangerous state of mind, is also the first to understand that Lisa’s only hope of help must come from her friends. M.N. persuades Betsy Goodman and Elizabeth Frazer that “group therapy” is the answer—providing Lisa with a way of letting off some of the terrific inward pressure, postponing the inevitable explosion.

  But Lisa doesn’t make their work easy. She’s alternately sensible and violent, open and deceitful, clearheaded and confused.

  Lisa, Bright, and Dark is a novel as current as the last time you looked at your wristwatch. Lisa and her friends are totally real, caring about real things: civil rights, sex, Paul Newman, riots, diet Jell-O, Paul Newman, and their futures.

  Funny as young people are, concerned in the same way, determined but a little at sea, Lisa’s “doctors” set out on a path of aid and comfort that will cause readers to reflect seriously, smile in recognition, and sympathize totally with Lisa and her illness.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  1

  “Daddy, I think I’m going crazy.”

  Mary Nell looked up astonished.

  “Oh?” Mr. Shilling said. “Why is that?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Lisa said. “I just think it’s true. And I’m frightened.”

  “More, Tracy?” Mrs. Shilling asked.

  “No, thanks,” Lisa’s sister answered.

  “Lisa?” her mother asked.

  “No. Listen, didn’t anyone hear what I just said?”

  “We heard you, dear,” Mrs. Shilling replied.

  “What is it you’re crazy about?” Lisa’s father asked.

  “Damn it, Daddy! That’s not it at all.” Lisa took a big breath, as though she were fighting something down.

  “What is it, then?”

  “That is it. I don’t know. I only have a feeling that something is awfully wrong. Inside my head. I hear people. Talking, I mean, inside.”

  “Coffee, Mary Nell?” Mrs. Shilling offered.

  “No, thanks, Mrs. Shilling,” M.N. answered.

  “Listen to me!” Lisa shouted.

  Everyone did.

  “I think I’m going crazy,” Lisa said again. “I think I’m going out of my mind. Could we get some help or something?”

  “Like what?” her mother asked. “You’ve mentioned this before, but you never say what you want to do about it.”

  M.N. was startled. This was the first time she’d ever heard Lisa say anything about this.

  “Besides,” Mrs. Shilling went on, “I think it’s very rude of you to discuss this sort of thing when we have guests.”

  “Oh,” M.N. smiled sheepishly, “don’t mind me. Really.”

  “Since you don’t pay any attention to me when we’re alone,” Lisa protested, “I thought you might with other people around.”

  “All right, all right,” Mrs. Shilling sighed. “What is it you think you need?”

  “Well,” said Lisa, calmer, quiet but not hopeful, “maybe a psychiatrist or someone. I mean,” she added quickly, “it wouldn’t have to be an expensive one. Just someone who would understand and know what to do.”

  “You’ve seen too many movies,” Mr. Shilling said.

  “Who else has a psychiatrist, Lisa, in your class?” her mother wanted to know.

  “How should I know?” Lisa said, clenching her teeth, trying to smile politely. “I don’t imagine it’s the kind of thing people talk much about.”

  “I think it’s exactly the kind of thing people do talk about, dear,” said her mother, ringing a little silver dinner bell for the maid and smiling knowledgeably.

  “Daddy, please,” Lisa said, straining. “Please, could you talk to someone, or get a doctor? Or maybe just do anything?”

  “All right, honey. As soon as I get back from Minneapolis,” he said pleasantly and got up from the table.

  Mary Nell said that Lisa just sat and stared at her father as he walked away. She started to turn toward her mother to say something but changed her mind. M.N. thought it might have been tears that stopped her.

  And then Mary Nell saw Lisa’s head begin to shake, ever so slightly. Not shake, exactly: quiver, up and down, from the chin. It was like palsy, M.N. said.

  After a moment, Lisa too stood up and excused herself. Then she ran upstairs.

  In her room, Lisa threw herself onto her bed and pulled up into a pony-position, on all fours, her sobs beginning the motion. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, she began to rock back and forth, rhythmically smashing her head into the headboard.

  M.N. stood in the hallway, listening through the door, before she eased it open.

  2

  My name is Betsy Goodman, and I count less than almost anyone else in this whole story.

  What that means is that I’m not overconfident about things. It’s nothing like a huge complex or anything; a lot of books say it’s common in people my age, which is fifteen.

  I’m not what you could call ravishingly beautiful, except for my teeth. These, as my father will be the first to tell you, are three thousand dollars’ perfect.

  I’m about average height (five-four), and I have dark, straight hair that falls to my shoulders without a hint of the slightest natural curl. My eyes are big, brown, and nearsighted, and when I absolutely have to I wear glasses.

  Years ago my eye doctor told me that big, beautiful eyes are almost always nearsighted.
It’s the kind of well-meant statement that just rolls around and rankles like crazy when you’re in front of a mirror looking into a horn-rimmed face.

  The only other thing that’s even vaguely interesting about me is my ambition. I do not want to be anything special—just what I think I’d be good at: being married. Maybe with a couple of kids and a really groovy-looking husband, living on a beach in California, reading about other special people who wanted to be something more and were.

  Right now, what I am is plain, single, and alive on Long Island (if you can stand it). But I am sort of simple which, when you find out more about some of the other people involved with Lisa Shilling, and about Lisa herself, is probably a very good thing.

  To begin with, there’s Mary Nell Fickett, who used to live in California! There are a few important things to know about M.N. fast: she’s very, very smart (she’d like to be the first woman justice on the Supreme Court); her father’s a minister, which has been madly helpful to us because he has a thousand and one books about everything you can imagine; and she’s not at all like me.

  She doesn’t wear glasses; she looks like Shirley MacLaine; she has a great laugh and eyes that make you smile back without thinking. And she’s fantastically popular with boys.

  Sometimes I stand near her just to see how many and which of them will come up to talk. It’s basking in her reflection, but it makes me feel a little prettier so it can’t be all bad. Besides, psychologically, as long as I know the reasons for doing what I do, whatever I do is O.K. (that’s a rough translation of something in one of M.N.’s father’s books).

  In spite of the fact that I’m younger than M.N. (I got a quicker start in nursery school, so I wound up a little ahead of myself), she and I are friends. That means more than just living within a couple of blocks of each other. Like we talk on the phone a lot, go shopping together, and spend the night at each other’s house every once in a while.

  It’s on those nights that I get my “lessons.” M.N. thinks I need help in the boy department. I mean, if you examine my diary for the past year, you won’t find it exactly bulging with gushy thoughts.

  So M.N. spends a lot of time smartening me up. She arranges my hair and my wardrobe, and insists on hiding my glasses. She thinks I depend on them too much. I think I’m climbing the stairs standing still without them.

  Naturally, we talk about everything in the world, from civil rights (which are M.N.’s big thing) to sex (which would be mine if I knew anything about it firsthand). And movie stars, and hippies, and free love, pot, potato pancakes, and Paul Newman; the Doors, censorship, Sly and the Family Stone. Strobe lights and see-throughs, Ethel and her kids, Paul Newman, Mia Farrow, the Iron Butterfly, and Paul Newman. Riots, Greenwich Village, suicide, San Francisco, diet Jell-O, and Brian Morris.

  He, if you want to know, is the cutest boy in our class. I mean it. He is absolutely gorgeous! The thing is, of course, he knows it. Still, zowie!!! M.N. likes to take him apart psychologically, examining everything he does for hidden motives and meanings. I just like to look at him.

  Of course, he didn’t belong to either one of us, then. He was Lisa’s. At least, he was for a while before she went away.

  If Mary Nell is the All-American Girl, and I nail down the All-American Schlepp spot, the role of Princess goes to Elizabeth Frazer.

  Elizabeth is something else. For one thing, she has piles of loot. For another, she hardly seemed as though she were in our school at all. It was more like she was just visiting each day.

  Which sounds dumb, I know. The reason for it is that Elizabeth is like Grace Kelly used to be: regal, cool, far off, blonde and slim, and with clothes you wouldn’t believe. And intelligent.

  M.N. is smart and studies. Elizabeth is intelligent. She never raises her hand in class, but if a teacher calls on her, she has the right answer as though it were something everyone automatically knew.

  Furthermore, if you’re suddenly missing a boy, look for Elizabeth, the flame among moths.

  To be fair, though, the thing about her and boys was that she moved here maybe a year and a half ago. So, of course, being a new girl and all, and being beautiful and loaded, you had to forgive a lot and understand instead.

  What Elizabeth Frazer had I hadn’t (besides wealth, beauty, brains, and such) was confidence. By the ton. She never explained anything, and never made excuses. If she, E. Frazer, did something, then of course it must have been right. At first, you thought she was unbelievably conceited. Later on, you didn’t.

  So there we all are, the three of us, with a sneaky look at Brian Morris (who just happens to look like Paul Newman, which certainly doesn’t do any harm). What you don’t have yet is a very complex, very simple—clever as can be but scary as hell—sometimes cheerful and often so depressed you wanted to lock her up until the mood passed—girl named Lisa Shilling.

  Lisa was crazy.

  But not like “crazy, man!” I mean, out of her skull. Sick, psychologically. Insane.

  We noticed something a few months ago. When she noticed it no one knew, but it was long before she tried to kill Elizabeth and, after that, herself.

  3

  We have a new high school in our town. It was exciting leaving our old dirty brick wreck with its broken windows, torn screens, no air-conditioning, broken hall lockers, and tuna fish sandwiches every Friday. Then we got to the new place.

  It has green blackboards, indirect lighting, air-conditioning, a new gym, clean halls with lockers that really lock, an enormous cafeteria—and tuna fish sandwiches every Friday. I guess it doesn’t matter how you wrap some packages.

  School was where all of us met. It’s where Lisa and Brian fell madly in love. It was perfect. Lisa was the kind of girl who couldn’t have been called beautiful, really; everything just seemed to fit. She was alert and had a mean sense of humor, and she seemed more grown up than the rest of us. She had an air which said she’d seen more of the world than we had. She had great style, a marvelous but not too full figure, and fantastic legs—the kind of girl who is usually secretary of the student council, not because everyone who knows her likes her, but because it seems the office is hers by right.

  This was great in the tenth grade, and even better in the eleventh, when Brian Morris got to be president of the council. This was unusual, because ordinarily the office goes to a senior. I think everyone just went wild over the idea of Brian and Lisa together that way. It happens, sometimes.

  I really didn’t know Lisa too well then (I still don’t, honestly). She was Mary Nell’s friend, not mine. I wasn’t going steady or anything like that, and in our school people run pretty much in groups. I mean, if Brian and Lisa wanted to do something, they would do it with other couples, not with people like me. Mary Nell, at the time, had a thing going with a senior almost as groovy as Brian himself. This one was a blond tennis player—the kind who goes to Yale or Princeton and winds up on Wall Street, joining lots of clubs. Anyway, that was how M.N. spent so much time with Lisa and Brian, and how I got to hear about everything they did.

  Of course, there were a lot of things M.N. told me about I didn’t pay much attention to. When one person always seems to be doing marvelous, groovy things, and all you get to do is hear about them, you can get a little depressed. So you learn to listen, or to seem to be listening, and to figure out when and how to nod at the right time, when to ask questions, when not to, and finally when to say you agree. This is called the art of conversation.

  Or selective inattention, as my father says. Choosing what you want to hear and concentrating only on that. It was about six months ago that I began listening to Mary Nell when she talked about Lisa. Even being told about Lisa by a third person gave you the feeling she was undependable sometimes, a little strange.

  The first thing I remember hearing was M.N.’s story about the night Lisa and Brian celebrated their first anniversary. A group of kids had gotten together for dinner and a movie, and then gone back to M.N.’s house. Lisa and Brian got funny presents, an
d there was dancing in Mr. Fickett’s study. In the middle of the study, in the middle of the dancing, Lisa suddenly turned odd.

  “Stop it!” she shouted, startling everyone. “Just stop it!” Then she turned and ran out of the room.

  M.N. and Brian followed, neither knowing what it was they were supposed to stop. Brian held M.N. back and went to Lisa in the living room. M.N., of course, stayed within earshot.

  “What is it, honey?” Brian asked Lisa, putting his arm around her shoulders. Lisa stared at him without speaking. “What’s the matter, Lisa?” Brian asked again. “What’s wrong?”

  After a minute, Lisa answered in a bitter voice. “You’re no better than the rest of them,” she said, cutting her words off so that she sounded almost English. “Why can’t you all stop it, and leave me be?”

  “But what have we done?” Brian asked.

  “Oh, really,” Lisa sighed as though she were suddenly very tired. “Why can’t everyone mind his own business? Why can’t people stare at something else for a change?”

  Brian said nothing.

  “Really, Brian,” Lisa went on. “Your friends are about the rudest people I’ve ever known. I should just like to be left alone, if you don’t mind.”

  M.N. walked into the living room then, and saw Lisa shake Brian’s hand off her shoulder and turn away sharply, heading for an easy chair in a dark corner of the room. Brian watched her go, letting her settle into the chair. Then M.N. took Brian and led him back to the study, explaining that maybe it was “that time” or something and that Lisa was probably just a little depressed.

  Which may have seemed true, for about ten minutes later Lisa was back with the crowd, dancing and laughing and her usual self. And that was that. I thought it sounded pretty weird, but I guess everyone (except M.N.) went back to normal, too, saying nothing more about it.

  M.N. remembered her dinner at the Shilling’s. She began to think that what she had thought was a great put-on might be real after all. She began to think about it, and then she began to talk about it, to me.