by John Neufeld
The thing was, though, you had to sympathize with Lisa. None of us was certain what exactly we were going to do for her that afternoon.
So our good intent for the day was ignored. We had no idea where Lisa was or what she was doing. “Don’t worry about it,” Elizabeth told us. “If Lisa really believes you care and want to help, she’ll come when she feels she needs you. So long,” she said, walking off by herself.
On our way home, M.N. was furious. “I don’t know where Elizabeth Frazer gets her nerve! I really don’t. It was our idea to help Lisa, not hers. All we asked was her help. She could have refused if she thought we were doing something stupid.”
“She’s not doing anything for us,” I said. “It has only to do with Lisa.”
“Still and all,” Mary Nell said, “her attitude could be better. We’re trying to help Lisa, too.”
“I guess Elizabeth has something we don’t,” I said. “It certainly grabbed Lisa. We can’t afford to lose her now because she seems sort of cold. We don’t need her. Lisa does. So,” I said smiling, “smile.”
“Nuts!” Mary Nell said, turning off to her street. “The whole thing just reeks!”
I got home and decided to get my sister’s old psychology books out of the basement. She kept all her books from college hoping that maybe, someday, she could go back and graduate. After, of course, she’d had a couple of kids and got them in school so she’d have the time. But I could find only one, which must have been the basic book in her beginning course.
It was a sort of survey, looking at lots of different things very fast. Mostly, as far as I could tell, it was about behavior. The way the authors went about studying this was through rats. Not very helpful, but I dug in anyway.
In an hour, I had learned about rats and mazes, Pavlov’s theory (all those poor dogs!), and the approach-avoidance conflict. I hung onto this last, because it seemed about the only useful information in the whole book. What it is is when someone wants to do something and yet knows he shouldn’t, he reaches out for the thing he shouldn’t have, remembers he shouldn’t have it, and pulls back. He can go through this for hours, days, years, which makes him absolutely motionless, afraid to do anything. It’s the sort of thing that could really hang you up.
After a while, though, I’d had it with rats and one poor guy who was so confused he couldn’t move. I wanted stronger stuff—you know, case histories of really grim people. But there weren’t any in this book so I put it aside and settled for the late afternoon movie.
In case you haven’t noticed, I know a lot about movies. Not trivia, like who lifted Joan Crawford up in the third number of Our Dancing Daughters, but about individual movies, what happened and who the stars were, and what they did afterward and so forth. I like Tuesday Weld a lot, and Steve McQueen, and a few others, but these really don’t compare with great actors like John Mills, Geraldine Page, or Cliff Robertson. About the only new person I’m hooked on is Cher. She must be the funniest, and sometimes the sexiest, lady going. Of course, I’m partial to Paul Newman. I hate to say it, but it is his eyes. I also have a feeling, though, that he’s a nice guy, too, which makes it O.K. for me to join the mob. I mean I like his eyes, but for me there’s more to him than that—like his body. Zowie!!!
Anyway, I turned on the television set in our game room and waited for it to warm up. At last (we have a very old television set) the picture came on. It was Raintree County.
I’d seen this about a thousand times, but suddenly I had a new idea. I grabbed the phone and dialed like crazy.
“M.N.?” I said. “Listen, they’ve got Raintree County on the Early Show. Yeah. So listen, you remember Liz Taylor goes bats, right? Maybe if we watch it hard, we’ll see something of Lisa in it. What? Well, then, I will, anyway. I’ll call you later if anything comes up, O.K.? O.K. Bye.”
Elizabeth Taylor, in case you haven’t seen this thing, is gorgeous—as an actress, I mean. For the first time (except for maybe A Place in the Sun) she really got her teeth into something and did a fair job of being someone else besides Elizabeth Taylor. She plays this lost sort of Southern belle who goes slowly nuts (it’s a very long movie) and finally dies, leaving Montgomery Clift free to marry Eva Marie Saint who has been so patient you can’t stand it for years and years and years. (I mean, it’s a very long movie!)
Anyway, comparisons were obvious. So I settled in. After all, I thought, even though it’s a movie, people take a lot of care to make things real and lifelike. The real-er something is, mostly the better it is. And Taylor had gotten an Academy Award nomination for it, so she must have caught the real thing in part, anyway. She must have studied some psychology to get the reality of her role and to play a madwoman convincingly.
That’s what I thought. Actually, I love the movie. So I sank into the corner of the couch, pulled up my legs, and put on my glasses. I was in heaven.
After about forty minutes, the doorbell rang. I didn’t move, because my brother was around somewhere. A couple of minutes later, he was standing in the doorway.
“One of your screwy friends is here,” he said.
I looked up. “Who?”
“Lisa Shilling,” he said, twirling his finger around his ear. I could have killed him.
I jumped up, switched off the set and got into my shoes in one motion, and ran to the front door. There she was. Just standing, waiting. “Come in,” I said, and smiled.
“Thanks, Betsy,” she said, following me back into the game room.
We sat down. Neither one of us said anything. I just didn’t know what to say.
“I couldn’t find Elizabeth,” Lisa said at last “I guess she didn’t go straight home.”
“She was waiting for you out front,” I told her.
“Oh,” Lisa said.
“Yeah,” I said. It wasn’t the most satisfactory conversation ever held. “Listen, would you like a drink or something? We’ve got one of everything.”
“Do I make you nervous?” Lisa asked.
I stopped. “Yes,” I said. “A little.”
“I’m glad you said that. Promise me something.”
“What?”
“That you’ll always be honest.”
“Oh,” I said. “I am most of the time, really.”
“But with me,” Lisa said, “you must always be.”
“O.K. That’s not so hard.”
“Mary Nell won’t be, you know,” Lisa told me.
“Why on earth not? She’s about the most direct person I ever met.”
“Yes, but she won’t be with me. She wants to shield me,” Lisa said. “She wants to be kind. People who want to be kind without understanding are almost always dishonest.”
“But that’s unfair,” I objected. “Really, Lisa, she’ll do the best she can. I know she will.”
Lisa smiled a little. “I know. I know she will. But her best won’t be as good as yours.”
Well! What do you say to something like that? “Shall I get Elizabeth on the phone?” I asked.
“If you like,” Lisa said, getting up to turn the television set on. I waited a minute, until she was comfortable, and then I went into the kitchen to phone Elizabeth—and Mary Nell.
Three minutes later, when I came back, Lisa had disappeared.
12
I looked around and then ran to find my brother. He hadn’t seen or heard anything.
I shrugged, deciding there wasn’t much I could do, and went back into the game room. Raintree County was still on, and I had just gotten comfortable again when the doorbell rang a second time. This time I ran to get it right away. It was Elizabeth. I had forgotten she was coming.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, coming in. “Where’s Lisa?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
“What do you mean? I thought she was here when you phoned.”
“She was. And when I phoned M.N., too. But when I went back into the game room, she was gone.”
“Oh, well,” Elizabeth sa
id turning around, getting ready to leave, “I guess we have to expect things like this.”
“Why don’t you stay a while,” I offered. “M.N. will be here in a second, so we may as well do something.”
Elizabeth looked at me a minute and then she smiled a little. “All right,” she said. I motioned her into the room where the set was still going, and then M.N. rang the bell.
I told her, as we walked to the back of the house, about Lisa’s disappearance.
“There are two reasons that’s ridiculous,” M.N. said. “Oh, hi,” she said to Elizabeth.
“Which two?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well, first, to come and ask for help, as best she can, I mean, and then run off. Second, why come to Betsy? She knows this was all my idea, and she has some kind of confidence in you. Why come to Betsy at all?”
It was a thought that hadn’t occurred to me. Why not? I thought now, but I agreed it was strange.
“I can tell you,” Elizabeth said. “She has less to fear from Betsy than from us.”
“Less to fear!” M.N. nearly shouted. “I’m reading my eyes out trying to find answers, trying to—”
“That’s just it, M.N.,” Elizabeth broke in. “It isn’t going to help doing that, trying to find answers. There aren’t any you can find in books.”
“Now look, Elizabeth Frazer,” M.N. said. “I don’t understand a lot of what’s going on here, but I can tell you one thing. What we have here is either a paranoid or a schizophrenic, and maybe both together. The only way we can even begin to help is by understanding the symptoms and labeling them, so we know exactly what we’re working with.”
“Mary Nell,” Elizabeth said pleasantly. “May I suggest something?”
M.N. waited. So did I.
“You can’t expect to label this,” Elizabeth said. “The only thing we know we have is a psychotic personality. How psychotic or serious we can’t know. Mental illness is something you play by ear, believe me. You can’t treat it as a math problem that has a logical solution. You won’t do Lisa any good if you go at it that way.”
Something in the way Elizabeth said this brought M.N. up short. She sighed. “But anyway,” she said, “why come to Betsy?”
“As I said,” Elizabeth explained, “Lisa feels more secure with her than with you. Maybe she knows you want to label and dissect and perform the operation. Betsy, in her own way, wants to help as badly, but she doesn’t judge. She feels for Lisa, instead.” I blushed. “No, Betsy,” Elizabeth said, “don’t. You have something neither M.N. nor I have, and it’s a very, very good thing to have, so hang onto it.”
“What is it, for heaven’s sake?” I asked.
“Warmth. A naturalness. A simplicity. It’s about the best therapy Lisa could ever have.”
Well! Of all the things I hadn’t ever wanted to be it was natural, warm, and simple. I’ve been working for years to become hard, sophisticated, worldly, and exciting. All that effort, all that time—all shot to hell! I smiled.
Elizabeth smiled back. “It could be worse,” she said.
“I guess,” I answered, shrugging.
“But I’m her friend!” M.N. shouted. “I want to help her!”
“You will,” Elizabeth said as nicely as she could. “You will, but you have to relax about it. The thing is that—”
There was a knock on a door. Elizabeth stopped talking and looked at me. The sound came again. I looked around.
Our game room is simple, and it looks like this: nothing fancy, but there is one wall of glass that opens onto the back yard where there’s a patio and a grill for cooking out. Another wall is all bookshelves, lots of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and magazines and the books the three of us had as kids. The third wall has an archway that leads into the hall going toward the front of the house. And the fourth wall has a fireplace with a few pictures above it and, on the right, a closet in which there is stereo stuff and records and a bar.
I jumped up and ran to the closet door, putting my ear to the wood and waiting. The knock came again, and it was from inside. I opened the door and there was Lisa, sitting on the floor, looking up at me.
I turned to face Elizabeth and M.N. Lisa stood up and came out of the closet. “Hi,” she said to everyone and to no one in particular. She walked into the room and sat down on the floor, in the middle of things.
“Anyone want anything to drink?” I offered. It was a stupid thing to say, but I said it anyway.
“I’ll have something,” Elizabeth said to help me. “But it has to be a diet thing.”
“Me, too,” M.N. said.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Lisa said from the floor.
I turned back into the closet to the small icebox and glasses and stuff. No one said anything while I poured and handed the drinks around.
“Do you think we could turn the TV off?” Lisa asked. “It makes me a little nervous.”
“Sure,” I said, and I did.
“Why does that make you nervous?” M.N. asked.
“I guess it hits a little close to home,” Lisa said.
“What does? Her sickness?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. Not that, really. It’s the scene in the … in the insane asylum, when he finally tracks her down.”
“But, Lisa,” I said, “that was a hundred years ago. Things can’t be that bad now.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Yet,” she said.
“I read something the other day,” M.N. said, “about just that sort of thing. About how while there are still a few of those older places, dungeons really, there are lots of new places, sort of communities, where life goes on normally, and everyone—”
“I read it, too, M.N.,” Lisa said. “Forget it.”
There was a pause.
“Well,” Lisa said, her voice changing a little, “let’s not all sit here staring. Amuse yourselves. Ask questions. Poke about a bit. Maybe we’ll all find it together.”
“Bull!” said Elizabeth. It was a shocker, coming from her.
“What do you mean?” Lisa asked angrily.
“I mean bull!” Elizabeth answered. “If you want to play at sympathy and roses, you can hire people for that.”
Lisa looked at Elizabeth for a very long minute. Then she smiled. “Right,” she said.
No one said anything then, for a time. You could hear breathing, and the tinkle of ice in glasses, and the rustle of a skirt against a chair cover as someone shifted.
“What terrifies me,” Lisa said in an odd, small voice, “is that I don’t know when it’s coming, or what to expect. I try to keep track of things, but then everything gets away from me anyway. Later, when I’ve got the upper hand again, I’m not sure whether I was dreaming or whether something actually happened.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“What does go on?” M.N. wanted to know.
“All kinds of crazy things,” Lisa said, smiling a little. “I mean, I make dates with people who don’t exist. I hear people who aren’t there. Just shadows, who talk to me and seem to make sense most of the time. They have beautiful voices, English, I guess, and I love to listen to them. It’s like one long dream, really. I hear everything and I do everything, and I also see everything. I watch things happen. I watch me, too, right in the middle of it. It’s like a movie, only better. I’m the star. It makes me wake up at night giggling, and sometimes it puts me to sleep in broad daylight. I can do that now, you know—sleep with my eyes open. It’s heaven.”
“Zowie!” I said. “Next time you fall asleep in class or something, nudge me. I’d love to see how you do it You could make a fortune teaching us all.”
“I know. That was one of the first things I thought of,” Lisa said laughing.
But her laughter changed. It became deeper, and then it was like a sudden violent series of coughs, a hacking sound. We waited and when it was over, Lisa looked around at us. “Come on,” she said. “What are you waiting for? Why give a damn now? Why am I worth more now?”
It
was her English voice again, deep and strong and husky, clipped and terrifying. “One is, after all, the same bloody person! What do you want from me now?”
“Lisa,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m quite sick of it all! Sick to death! Of you all, too,” Lisa went on, looking squarely at M.N. Mary Nell blanched. “Yes, yes, I am. You, too!”
“But Lisa,” Mary Nell began.
“Don’t give me any of that,” Lisa said quickly. “You’re always so damned smart, planning and organizing everything. This is all your good work, this whole thing!”
I thought M.N. was going to burst into tears, but Elizabeth reached over and touched her arm.
“You are quite the most rotten, sneaky, conniving little person I’ve ever known,” Lisa went on, really rolling now. It was amazing. “You are, yes. You’ve always wanted Brian for yourself. You and everyone else I know. You’ve always envied me. Hated me. That’s why you planned everything, so very carefully planned it all. You and Brian and all of you! Getting the teachers in it, though, that was the clever thing. Oh yes, that was cleverer than clever, even more than paying my parents off.”
“Lisa!” Elizabeth shouted, standing up. “Lisa! Stop it!”
Lisa looked up at Elizabeth with something close to hatred in her eyes. They held each other’s glance for the longest minute I’d ever lived through, and then something seemed to break. Lisa slumped and began to cry, silently at first but then loudly a moment later. It was a rasping sound, still in a strange tone, and it began to change as we all were still, shocked. It, her voice I mean, as she was crying, moved back up the scale somehow and in a minute she was Lisa again, crying as Lisa would, I guess, if she were the real Lisa.
By that time, M.N. was crying, sort of shaking and just letting tears streak down her cheeks. She sat on the couch, her arms at her sides, crying right along with Lisa.
Finally Lisa slowed down a little. As she did, she looked up at Mary Nell, who hadn’t slowed down at all. Abruptly, Lisa’s tears stopped and her look was one of concern and love, and then shame. She stood up and went to M.N.
For a second Lisa simply stood next to M.N. Then she touched her shoulder very gently. “Help me,” she whispered.
