by John Neufeld
“Hole!” Lisa shouted and doubled up hysterically.
M.N. looked as though she’d been to war. Elizabeth and I couldn’t hold back any longer and we howled. We laughed and giggled and rolled on the floor, pointing at M.N. and hooting, calling her “Freud” and “doctor” and “genius.”
M.N. just stared at us all, probably wondering if what Lisa had had all this time had suddenly become contagious.
Finally she nodded. “O.K., you guys,” she said. “O.K.”
It took us another two or three minutes to get ourselves under control again, as M.N. tore off the pages she’d written and put them in a drawer, carefully folded, no doubt for later reading.
“And then,” Lisa said, no longer smiling, “and then, there is my father. Or rather, there isn’t my father.”
No one moved. No one even breathed.
“But that’s for some other time,” Lisa said, getting up off the couch. “That’s for some other day,” she said and walked out of M.N.’s house on her heels.
15
“I decided you shouldn’t be doing this alone,” Mr. Bernstein said, “so I called her teachers together and we discussed what realistically we could do.”
“Was Mr. Jackson there, too?” I asked.
“No,” Mr. Bernstein said. “The principal’s a very busy man. He might misunderstand what we were saying and dismiss Miss Shilling altogether, as though by getting rid of her somehow helped her, too. It wouldn’t, of course.”
I nodded. Mr. Bernstein seemed to be fighting for time, and I realized that whatever he and Lisa’s teachers had decided to do probably wouldn’t be enough.
“The difficulty is, Miss Goodman, that we have two responsibilities. To Lisa, and to the others, her classmates. How can we help her without hurting the others? And, too, there are the parents. You know how much trouble parents can cause when they want to.”
I remembered the school strike in New York City, with parents trying to run schools, and teachers disagreeing, and no schools being run at all. Out where we live it probably wouldn’t have been so bad, but we’ve had times too when parents, just one set, caused enough trouble for a whole town.
Then something else hit me. Bernstein and the teachers were being more than cautious. They were afraid of Lisa’s parents. Plain and simple afraid. I sighed and tried very hard to remember that teachers are human, too, and must have problems that sometimes make them do things they don’t want to.
“You are reading my mind, perhaps?” Mr. Bernstein asked me.
“What you mean is that there isn’t anything you can do that won’t make the Shillings furious, or put yourselves and Mr. Jackson in a bad position.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Some of her teachers realize what is wrong. Especially one of them, your Mr. Milne.”
“What about the others?”
“We all agree on one thing. Final exams are not far away. For the sake of the other students, we decided that Lisa should be left alone, under your care. We may be able to help by keeping her with us and exercising whatever control we can. After all, it’s better for her to be here in school with us than on the loose somewhere. But one of you must always be at her side. The teachers will help if you need it and if they can. She will not be asked questions unless she volunteers. She will not be disturbed by anyone. And then, when it is all over, the responsibility will be her family’s, as it should be.”
It wasn’t much, I thought to myself. In fact, it wasn’t anything. But I decided to be bright about it. We had made our point with Lisa’s teachers and they finally agreed something was wrong. At least we didn’t have to worry about Lisa in class any more, unless she got a bee in her bonnet. I pictured Lisa spending each day with her hands tied at her sides and her mouth taped shut.
“Well,” I said to Mr. Bernstein, “it’s not much, but it does simplify things. Thank you.”
“It’s small, but it might help,” he said.
I nodded. And then I gave him my Joanne Woodward smile—the one that starts slow along one side of my face and then spreads—to say “thank you” again. For whatever his problems were, Mr. Bernstein had done something. He had allowed himself to be drawn in a little.
On my way to the cafeteria, I flipped back in my mind to see Lisa in the past few weeks, replaying scenes and speeches and incidents. Certainly Lisa wasn’t getting any better. After that one therapy session where we put M.N. on, therapy meetings just melted into sitting around and talking about a lot of stuff that didn’t mean anything. Didn’t mean anything to Lisa, that is.
For it seemed only with me would Lisa talk about her illness. I don’t know why, but Lisa loved to sit and talk at me after school. She would walk home with me and we’d sit in the game room, drinking or eating or watching television, and she’d ramble on and on.
Sometimes she would be Lisa, and sometimes she would be her mother and talk through her teeth, which doubled me up. Sometimes she would say awful things and use terrible words, but usually in her other, English voice, when, I guess, she was someone else altogether. I guess it pleased that person, whoever she was, to shock me. She did.
She would call me names I had never even read, and she’d explain sex and physical things sometimes until I thought I’d just pass out from embarrassment. Then, other times, she’d tear me apart—being funny, I suppose she thought. Her sense of humor, which was always fast, got faster and sharper and meaner. She used it like a magician who holds up his sword to show you how sharp it is. The blade shines and everything is still. Then he picks up a piece of silk and throws it in the air above the sword. It falls gently, cut in half by simply landing on the razor-sharp edge of the sword.
Lisa loved to show off the same way, to demonstrate how clever she was, how mean and brilliant and in charge.
For example, one Friday in homeroom, we were all talking about a trip we were making the next day into a poor part of town to help clean up the neighborhood after an enormous fire. Some of the kids were nervous about it, but our teacher, who was something of a do-gooder anyway, told us not to be. What was important was that we were giving help because we wanted to. It would be a good experience for us all.
“For everyone who goes,” Lisa reminded the teacher.
“Well, yes,” the woman said. “For everyone who goes. Aren’t you planning to come with us, Lisa?”
“Actually,” Lisa said, giving us her mother’s voice, “actually, I simply can’t. I just haven’t had time to get all my shots.”
It was a setup, of course, and it was bitter and brutal when you looked at three or four people in our class. But it was Lisa’s and she loved it, and she chuckled through the rest of the hour.
For another example, one afternoon we were sitting in my house, talking about something our social sciences’ teacher had brought up that day, about one’s image of oneself and the image received by people looking at you. His point was that each of us was guided, to some degree, by what others thought of us, as well as by what we thought of ourselves. Lisa disagreed.
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t care what other people think of me, as long as they see me as I see myself.” And she was off in a fit of hysterical laughter, killing herself with her own wit and falling about. I thought she was wasting a lot of good stuff on me.
But these little things happened on Lisa’s good days, and those were rare. The bad days were rapidly taking over. She would begin crying for no reason in the middle of class. She was late to almost every appointment, and she was getting to be a pro about disappearing for hours at a time.
In school, she would speak out in the middle of class in her funny English voice. One line things that made no sense to any one, that seemed to come from a different girl than the one sitting there in Lisa Schilling’s chair. The effect on a class when she did this was curious. There was instant silence, while everyone seemed to think about what had been said. No one looked at her. No one said anything in answer to her. The teacher would wait a minute, and then, as if nothing had happened, go o
n with the lesson.
There was no doubt, as I said before, that Lisa scared the hell out of us all.
I finally got to the cafeteria and spotted Elizabeth. M.N. and Lisa were at another table, already finished with their lunches. I went through the line—it was Friday; guess what we had—and then sat down with Elizabeth.
“The trouble is,” I said, “Mr. Bernstein reminded me of something we forgot.”
“What? I think he’s done fair service with the teachers. After all, no one ever calls on Lisa now, and she always has one of us nearby.”
“Well, that’s just to keep her quiet. But it’s nearly time for exams. That’s not so bad by itself, but what happens at the end of the year?”
“How do you mean?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well, look,” I explained. “You go to Maine for the summer, right? Mary Nell’s whole family is going out to Ohio some place. Her father is teaching there at a summer school, and M.N.’s going along, too. I have a job in Westbury.”
“Good grief!” Elizabeth said, startled. “You’re right. I’d completely forgotten.”
“Well, what are we going to do? There won’t be anyone around who understands for whole months!”
Elizabeth thought a minute. “We can hope for only one thing, as far as I can see,” she said.
“What?”
“That Lisa has one of her real sessions when she’s at home, when her parents are around. Screaming is all well and good, but it’s only that: screaming. If finally the Shillings see something to frighten them, they might believe the whole thing. They would have to.”
“But, Elizabeth, you know they don’t pay any attention to her, anyway.”
“True,” Elizabeth said, thinking. “Maybe there is one other, last ditch thing.”
“What? What is it?”
Elizabeth looked at me a minute without smiling. “It’s nothing. Never mind. It may not work, anyway,” she said, her face clouding a little. It was a look I’d often seen, and it fascinated me. But I was no closer to understanding what that particular look meant than I was when I first saw it.
“I’ve got to go,” Elizabeth said suddenly, standing up. “Do you mind finishing by yourself?”
“No. Of course not. See you.”
“O.K.,” she said, and turned to walk away.
I watched her go, trying to pull some hunch out of my own dark recesses that could explain Elizabeth Frazer. Whatever the idea was she had, it was one that she had not just thought of, for Elizabeth didn’t just think of anything. I tried to think what her idea might be, but I didn’t get too far. I saw Brian Morris across the way, watching me.
He wasn’t watching, exactly. It was a different look, one I couldn’t remember seeing before. It was an interested stare. I was just beginning to wonder what effect my Woodward Special would have on Brian when I remembered Lisa, and her outburst at Mary Nell. Even though she said nothing could matter less to her, Lisa did still care. How could I even begin to think about Brian that way when I knew that?
Easy.
Well, I thought, what the hell. Guilt could be like that approach-avoidance thing and hang you up forever. I want to live, live, live! If Joanne married gorgeous Paul, her smile must have had some effect! So I launched it at Brian, the full one, not the warm-up I’d given Bernstein.
I let it start in my left corner, let it spread slowly upward, across my forehead, let it sink down very slowly until it hit the right corner of my mouth, and then held the whole beautiful thing for a full five seconds. It took a minute, but at last Brian smiled. Smiled back at me! Cool Hand Luke, indeed! Luke wouldn’t have had a chance.
16
A few weeks later, on a Sunday when none of us had anything to do, Elizabeth asked the three of us up to her house for dinner. Her mother had gone into New York for a few days to their apartment, and Mr. Frazer had been in Europe for the past few weeks, so Elizabeth was alone. She decided we should all cook our own hamburgers on an open fire in back of their house.
It was the first time Elizabeth had ever asked us to anything. I realized that without us, M.N. and Lisa and me, Elizabeth’s chances of making friends would have been pretty slim. Elizabeth was beautiful, but what seemed like coldness in her put people off. Boys thought she was sensational, of course, and took her out. But nothing ever seemed to last.
Not that Elizabeth pushed them away or anything. I guess they felt inferior, mentally, so that after a couple of dates a guy would give up and fall back into the crowd until someone else took a chance.
Anyway, we arrived at about six and sat outside doing nothing for a while. It had been a beautiful day and the evening hadn’t yet turned cool. Summer was definitely on its way, which raised everyone’s spirits. Especially after the year we had all had. The only problem was, as I said before, what about Lisa and summertime? It was a problem we hadn’t begun to solve.
Lisa was having what was one of her few good days left, so the talk was general, the kind of thing any girls our age would talk about. We roamed from Mama Cass to Vanessa Redgrave, from The Graduate to 2001 and the latest Rowan and Martin bit. From longer skirts to Elizabeth’s mother’s diamonds, which are huge. From Natalie Wood to Last Summer, and from there to drugs (largely on the basis of rumor, I’m sorry to say) to Hair. We even got around to civil rights and riots, but this was mostly for M.N.’s benefit, so she could hold forth for her allotted five minutes. I wanted to talk about sex, but I was hooted down in favor of Paul Newman.
Anyway, we were having a lot of fun. The hamburgers were great, and afterward Elizabeth made a new kind of instant coffee that wasn’t half bad.
“Coffee drinking is like smoking,” M.N. said. “It’s something you do to show how old you are.”
“I just like it,” Lisa said. “I’d rather like it than think about it.”
“But thinking separates us from animals,” M.N. said. “I’m glad we can do it.”
“Thinking also takes the fun out of doing,” Elizabeth added.
“It’s better to live than to think about living,” Lisa agreed. She said it lightly, but her voice was a little deeper, a little more brittle than before. We should have paid more attention.
“On the other hand,” I said, barreling in, “if you can’t do something you want to, it doesn’t do any real harm imagining that you’re doing it.”
“Oh, Betsy,” Mary Nell laughed. “You’re back to Paul Newman!”
“Well,” I blushed, “he’s certainly good at some things I like to think about.”
“Actually,” Lisa said, “this is circuitous. We’re circling and getting nowhere except back again.”
“True,” Elizabeth said, again ignoring Lisa’s new tone, hearing the “actually” but not understanding it. “I’d rather talk about anything than about talking or thinking. Let’s carve someone up instead. Come on, M.N., who has what complex today?”
Mary Nell laughed and started to think who her target would be. Elizabeth went back to the fireplace and began putting out the fire. Clouds of smoke puffed up each time she shoveled sand out onto the coals. Lisa stood up and took a few steps toward Elizabeth. A cloud of smoke suddenly rose up from the fireplace, and she stopped. When it had lessened she took another step forward until she was standing directly behind Elizabeth.
That was all we saw for a minute, for another puff of smoke rose and held both Elizabeth and Lisa in its blue-gray bounds for a second. When it cleared, I screamed, “Elizabeth!”
Lisa had shoved Elizabeth toward the dying fire, and had jumped on her in one movement. She began hitting Elizabeth’s face, then changed her attack and began punching Elizabeth everywhere she could—her sides, her stomach, kicking at her legs, grabbing her by the hair. It was terrifying.
M.N. and I jumped up and ran toward the fireplace. Lisa was almost superhuman. She was a windmill, striking out in every direction, blow after blow battering Elizabeth who by now had covered her head with her arms and doubled over, more in protection I hoped than in pain. She didn�
��t cry out or ask for help. And Lisa just kept swinging until Elizabeth sank onto the grass.
Mary Nell made a grab for Lisa, who swung around and slapped her hard across the face. M.N. recoiled, shocked, and then plunged back toward Lisa, grabbing one of her arms and reaching for the other. Lisa struck out with her legs, kicking furiously at any part of M.N. she could reach.
I ran behind Lisa, for some reason remembering what people do to horses in a fire. I waited for the right moment and then swung both arms up and over Lisa’s head from behind, bringing my hands down, fingers locked together, covering her eyes. This took Lisa off balance, the weight of an attack from behind, and the temporary blindness. She lost her footing and fell backward against me.
I was scared stiff, and as she fell I naturally let go so she would fall alone. When she hit the ground, eyes open and arms still swinging, she screamed as I’d never heard anyone scream, not even in the movies. Then all was quiet.
Elizabeth got up. She had a cut lip and her hair was pulled down and hung over to one side, covering an eye that was going to be bruised for several days. She had skinned her elbows, and one was bleeding slightly. Her breath came in little gasps, as though she were trying to laugh but pain kept her from doing so.
M.N., who had only a few marks on her legs, went over to examine Elizabeth’s wounds. I ran into the house to the medicine cabinet and brought back what I could find: iodine and band-Aids.
Lisa, meanwhile, stayed where she’d fallen, in a sort of trance. She neither moved nor spoke. It seemed as though she wasn’t even breathing. She stared straight ahead.
Mary Nell, naturally, recovered enough to get mad. “Lisa,” she said, “how could you do that? Don’t you understand, Elizabeth is a friend of yours? She’s just like us, Betsy and me. We want to help, damn it! We can’t unless you let us, you know. I don’t know what makes you like this, but it has to stop. That’s all there is to it!”
“Let her be,” Elizabeth whispered. “She had her reasons.”
