Madhouse Fog

by Sean Carswell

  “It’s like they say: if you want to see the stars in LA, go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”

  “No kidding.”

  “It must be tough keeping all those stories to yourself,” I said.

  “Oh, you know it. I got the dirt on a few of them.” The side of Lola’s mouth crept up into a little half-smile. She kept walking and the conversation faded. I didn’t press for details because, to be honest, I didn’t care about the dirt. Most of the time, I only knew that a celebrity was at the psych hospital because one of the Roads and Grounds guys would excitedly tell me that a famous person was there and then explain who the celebrity was and then get frustrated with me because I usually hadn’t seen the celebrity’s TV show or movie or heard the hit song. The only time I got excited to meet a patient was when an aging Orange County punk rocker was admitted. No one else seemed to know who he was, so suddenly I could feel superior, like, “You never heard this song!” and, “You don’t have this album!” But that only served as a reminder that I no longer had that song or that album because my wife had sold them on eBay in the days leading up to our divorce.

  I thought about that patient. I rubbed the bare ring finger on my left hand. Lola and I strolled down Main Street, half a mile east of downtown and cruising further east at three mph.

  Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, outside the basic shopping and dining district of town, there wasn’t a ton of action surrounding us. Cars whizzed by on the street beside us. A few motorcycles rumbled past, mostly the big money models with riders dressed in hundreds of dollars’ worth of leather that looked new and crisp and ready for one of their thrice-annual rides. An occasional bicyclist would pedal along, sometimes atop feather-light road bikes and decked out in the full complement of spandex and logos, sometimes atop dented mountain bikes and decked out in baggy shorts and t-shirts. One girl rode by on a pink beach cruiser. The bike had a white wicker basket with plastic flowers. Lola pointed to it and said, “That’s what I need.”

  We ambled along past thrift stores and a guitar shop and a tattoo parlor and a barbecue joint and a locksmith and several empty shops. Main Street ahead promised a coffee shop and a Little League field. Lola said, “I have a plan.”

  She led me into the coffee shop and said, “What’s your favorite fruit?”

  “I don’t know. Oranges.”

  “Oranges? That’s no fun. How about mangos?”

  “Sure. I love mangos.”

  “Perfect.” Lola walked up to the counter. A shaggy, tattooed kid leaned against a cooler, flipping through a free weekly newspaper. He saw Lola, slowly set down the weekly, and acknowledged her with the slightest head nod. Lola kept on her big, round, white sunglasses. She really did look like a movie star. I daydreamed about her being a movie star. Or not so much her being a movie star but what it would feel like if she were and she’d escaped the limelight for a day and had her driver take her up to this quiet little beach community and gave him the afternoon off so that she could stroll down Main Street with me and buy a smoothie and talk about how nice it was to get away from the rat race for a day. And, for some reason, that daydream felt no better than knowing that she’d just gotten out of a psych hospital and sought me out and strolled down Main Street and bought me a smoothie. The tattooed kid blended fruit, juice, and ice together. Lola rested, hands on knees, checking out the pastries behind the glass. Movie star or mental patient, it was all the same. I sidled up next to her.

  “You want a muffin?” she asked.

  “Nah. I had lunch already.”

  “Brownie? Lemon square?” She pointed at the goods behind the glass. “Pumpkin crunch? Macaroon? It’s on me.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”

  “Scone? Come on. Have a scone.”

  I realized what Lola was up to. Fifteen years with my wife had taught me how to recognize when a woman is feeding me just so she can feel okay about eating. And, come on, what kind of spoilsport is going to say no to dessert on a day like this? I said, “All right. Sure. I’ll split a muffin with you.”

  Lola ordered a blueberry muffin from the tattooed kid. She insisted on paying for everything. When the kid rang up the two smoothies and the muffin, the total came to $8.05. Lola gave the kid nine dollars. She leaned over the counter and peeked into the register. “Can I get my change in nickels?”

  The kid looked at Lola like she’d just gotten out of a mental institution. Somewhere in his brain was a manila folder labeled Nutty Customers. He filed this moment into that folder. Later, he’d tell his friends, “Seriously, dude. Nineteen nickels. What kinda crap? What can you even buy with a nickel?”

  He counted the nickels out into her hand. She tipped him a dollar bill and poured the nineteen nickels into her pink and black checkered coin purse. Even with those big, round, white sunglasses, I could see her beaming like a kid on the first day of summer vacation. Here she was with a smoothie and a muffin and a purse full of change, strolling out into the fresh, crisp Southern California springtime. Seeing her with this smile not just on her face but in her shoulders and in her hips and in the balls of her feet, I flashed back to the Folsom High School afternoons when Lola and I would hang out, and this one day in particular when I took her out for ice cream. She’d ordered a triple scoop cone: strawberry, vanilla, and rocky road on the top. The ice cream towered over the tiny cone in her little hand. She glowed in the prospect of this absurd amount of ice cream and the guy who was cool with feeding it to her. She actually skipped once as we left the store. The three scoops shook but didn’t fall. We sat on a bench in front of the shop. The sidewalk below was stained with drippings from cones of days gone by. Cars circled the vast parking lot in front of us. Lola attacked the triple scoop. So serious and determined about the ice cream that I actually started to worry that she’d lick too hard and the whole tower would topple. I imagined the scenario: the three scoops plopping on the stained sidewalk, the suddenly downtrodden Lola, my offers to buy her a new cone even though we both knew that a replacement cone loses all the magic. But the scoops didn’t drop. She managed that little bit of joy in her hand, despite how fragile and fleeting it was. She took it all in.

  Lola led me across Main Street to the Little League field. Nine players dressed in blue jerseys and white pants covered the field. Judging from their height and from the slow, loping pitch that floated across the plate and the late swing of the batter, I gathered that the ballplayers couldn’t be more than ten or eleven years old. The batter stepped out of the batter’s box. He took two practice swings. He chewed his gum and blew a bubble. He took one more practice swing and stepped back into the box, wearing the one red jersey in the field of blue. Lola led me to the top of the aluminum bleachers on the visitor’s side. Most of the parents sat in the other set of bleachers. One father paced behind the home plate fence. His loafers kicked up dust, but he was otherwise clean and pressed. When the pitcher started his wind-up, the father lined himself up, outside the field of play but directly behind the umpire, in perfect position to view that second called strike. He pumped his fist.

  Lola opened her change purse and dumped the nickels onto the aluminum bench between us. The coins pinged on the bleachers. Lola separated the nickels into two piles, one of nine nickels, the other of ten. She pushed the ten nickels in my direction. She pointed to the scoreboard in right field. The count on the batter was two balls, two strikes. Lola held up a coin. “A nickel says this kid strikes out.”

  I picked up two coins from my pile. “Ten cents says that he not only walks, but that intense dad behind home plate yells at the pitcher.”

  “No,” Lola said. “We’re only betting nickels.”

  I put a nickel down into neutral territory. She set her coin next to mine. The next three pitches brought a ball, a foul down the first base line, and another ball. The kid walked. The intense father kicked the home plate fence and shouted something about the umpire’s shrinking strike zone. I picked up the two nickels.

  Lola set another ni
ckel down. “Double play. This kid’s gonna get the blue team out of the inning.”

  I set my nickel next to hers. The next red batter dropped a bunt on the first pitch. The ball waddled down the third base line. The catcher leapt from his crouch, scooped up the ball, and winged it to second base. The ball flew about four feet over the second baseman’s head. The center fielder had been watching traffic and didn’t realize that the ball was coming to him until it rolled past. He chased it back to the center field wall. The first runner scored and the bunter jogged safely to second base. The intense dad laced his fingers into the chain link fence and shook it, screaming, “Come on! Defense! Come on!” I picked up two more nickels.

  With every batter, Lola placed another nickel down and called another bet. I kept winning. I realized that I was going to win all of her nickels if I didn’t call out the bets, so I called out a few. My bets were a little more risky. A nickel that Angry Dad offers his glasses to the ump. A nickel that the kid in right field scratches his balls before another pitch is thrown. That kind of thing. I even won most of those bets. Lola seemed to absorb any losses. When she won, though, she didn’t get excited at all. She just plopped a new nickel down and made an even more outrageous bet.

  After two innings, the smoothies had melted down to watery juice and I had all nineteen nickels in my pile. I tried to split them up again, but Lola said, “No. Gambling’s only fun if you really win or lose the money.”

  So there I was, with a pocketful of nickels and a nagging suspicion that I was maybe enabling a gambling addict fresh out of the psych hospital. That second thought must have floated above my head in a cartoon bubble because Lola said, “If you want to ask me why I was in the hospital, you can.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can respect your privacy.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Sure, I’m curious, but it’s none of my business.”

  “If I showed up at your house with a cast on my leg, would you ask me what happened?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So when I show up at your apartment straight from the psych hospital, why don’t you ask me what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I did know that, clearly, she wanted to talk about it. So I said, “What happened?”

  “I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been clean for six months now. I moved away from my bad influences. I’m doing okay.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “It’s not great. I’m an alcoholic. That sucks.” Lola stretched out the plastic wrap that her muffin had come in. Tiny crumbs clung to it. She twisted the clear plastic and wrung it into a long, thin roll. She tied a knot in the center of the roll, pulled it tight, and tied another one. “I totally bottomed out about six months ago.”

  “I meant it’s great that you’re sober.”

  “I hope so.”

  I reached over and patted her knee. It was intended to be a friendly gesture. A bit of reassurance. But as soon as my fingers tapped those cotton and polyester warm-up pants, I felt a jolt and realized that it was the first time I’d actually touched a woman in weeks.

  Lola took off her sunglasses. She pinched the bridge of her nose, one finger on the inside cusp of each eye. She slipped the glasses back on. “And I was sexually abused by my father. Repeatedly. When I was too young to do anything about it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sorry that it happened.”

  Lola nodded. The Little League game below us reflected in the lenses of her glasses. “I can talk about it now. There’s no shame. It’s not my fault, right?”

  “It’s absolutely not your fault.”

  “But for years, I carried it around with me. All that guilt and blame. And, you know, being as Catholic as I was, it really rattled me. And then he died. To be honest, I wasn’t sad at all. I actually felt a little happy. Relieved, you know?”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Not really. I didn’t understand it. I felt so shitty, like everything was my fault. It was haunting. I honestly believed that Jesus died on a cross to forgive me for allowing my father to molest me. It was crazy. And so I drank and drank and drank. But it didn’t help.”

  Lola leaned forward and rolled up her warm-up pants. Her striped socks had fallen down to her ankles. She pulled the socks back up. The black and gray stripes circled her calves. The red heart burned in the sun. I read the words on the banner again. Lola readjusted her pant legs.

  “You know, you read Bukowski or you watch movies about alcoholics and it seems so beautifully tragic: this lost soul burying his problems in a bottle. But when you live it, it’s not a beautiful tragedy. It’s a slow, lazy death. Mostly, you’re just watching basic cable.”

  I laughed a little at this line. Then I said, “Sorry.”

  Lola smiled. “I’m serious. We all have this image in our head of a troubled soul in his beautiful suicide, but the truth of the matter is, you just spend your days drinking and watching crappy reruns. I found myself crying during a sad episode of King of Queens and I said, ‘That’s it. I need help.’”

  “Really?”

  “Not quite. I’m kidding. Sort of. I never cried during a sitcom. But you get the point, anyway.”

  I guess I did. More or less.

  “So now it’s all like those nickels in your pocket. Sure, I lost something but it’s gone now. I can make my peace with that.” Lola sucked up the last watery remnants of her smoothie. Scattered drops rattled with the air in her straw. “And so, that’s done. Let’s go look for new adventures.”

  Lola stood, brushed the muffin crumbs off her black warm-up pants, and started down the bleachers. I followed, nineteen nickels jingling in my jeans.

  19

  Dr. Bishop sat on a small metal stool facing a squirrel in a cage. The squirrel skittered around half mad, knowing what was coming. I sat behind and to the right of Dr. Bishop, clipboard on my lap, pen in hand. She held a small gadget in her hand: a three-inch metal tube with a button on top and a wire running from the bottom. It was like the buzzers that game show contestants use when they have an answer. When Dr. Bishop pushed the button, an electric current flooded the squirrel’s cage. The squirrel leapt. The leap didn’t help him much. The current ran through him. His short hairs stood briefly on end.

  Prior to putting the squirrel in the cage, I had tested the shock. I tested it first with a voltmeter. It barely registered. I tested it second by putting my hand on the wired bottom of the cage and pushing the button. The shock felt like static electricity. It wasn’t pleasant but it was far from painful. I realized, of course, that my threshold for pain was much higher than the squirrel’s. Still, there wasn’t enough juice in that cage to do real harm to anything.

  I had also fashioned a wooden platform in one corner of the cage. The platform was exactly big enough for the squirrel to stand on, but no bigger. Because the platform was wooden, it was impervious to the electric shocks. A wise squirrel would seek solace there.

  After the squirrel leapt, I made a note in Dr. Bishop’s notepad. We were investigating whether or not the squirrel would figure out when the jolt was coming and react prior to the jolt. It was an alternate take on Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment. Instead of setting off a buzzer to warn the animal that a shock was coming, Dr. Bishop sent a mental warning. She thought to herself and hopefully to the squirrel, ‘Okay, little fellow, I’m going to shock you in three… two… one… Jump!’ Then she pushed the button. My job entailed watching the squirrel to see if he jumped onto the platform before the shock hit him. Dr. Bishop went through the ritual of thought, countdown, shock twenty-five times. The squirrel never made it onto the platform at the right time.

  Dr. Bishop stood from her stool and set the buzzer down. The squirrel darted around in his little 2’ × 3’ cage. He clearly had no idea where the shocks were coming from. Dr. Bishop reached for my clipboard. I handed it over. She examined the notations.

  The sheet on the clipboar
d contained a simple chart. On the top was written the date, the number Dr. Bishop had assigned for the squirrel, the time, and various codes about where and how this experiment fit into Dr. Bishop’s larger research project. The body of the page had fifty rows and three columns. The first column was labeled ‘shock.’ Each row in that column contained a number, starting at one and ending at fifty. The second column was labeled ‘anticipation.’ All of the rows were empty. The third column was labeled ‘no anticipation.’ The first twenty-five rows had checks in them.

  Dr. Bishop’s gaze drifted up and down the rows and columns. She tugged her earring. It was a dangling gold dreamcatcher. “I have another idea,” she said. She went to the storage closet behind me. I swung in my chair to watch her. She pulled out a full-face motorcycle helmet. The face shield had been spray-painted black.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  Dr. Bishop returned to her stool. “The problem is, we’re dealing with Mindland, not telepathy. I’m trying to reach this squirrel on a deeper level. I worry that my conscious mind may interfere too much with my unconscious mind. So I got this helmet. When I put it on, I can hardly see or hear anything. Maybe the sensory deprivation will help me to reach Mindland and warn this little squirrel.”

  Mindland was the word Dr. Bishop had been using lately for the collective unconscious, though she only used it around Eric and me. I liked it. The word made me feel as if there were a land outside our bodies where our thoughts could vacation. The way Dr. Bishop said it was a bit curious, too. She didn’t pronounce the two words separately, like a land of the mind. She blended them, said them with the familiarity of a native of Mindland, so that the word rhymed with island or Vineland. When she said it, I would sometimes get lost in daydreams about a little kid born in Mindland, growing up with no body to return to, learning to live through a series of mischievous misadventures that planted ridiculous thoughts and cheesy songs into the heads of all who so carelessly let our unconscious thoughts rest in his home land.