In the Company of Crazies

  But it wasn’t until the boy who unstuck stuck balls from the gutter came over to our lane for the fifth time that I started to wonder how this must all look to an outsider. He was a skinny kid with the butt of his blue jeans nearing the back of his knees. That was mostly all I got to see of him as he walked down the raised rim between the lanes and gave the ball a little push. This sent the ball straight into the black hole of the unknown where it would somehow pop back up into the console thingy where, of course, Mr. Simone now sat in control.

  “Aw, give me another chance,” Billy called out to the boy with the baggy jeans.

  The boy turned and looked up at Billy. “Huh?”

  “Can you roll it back this way instead?” Billy said. “I don’t want a gutter ball.”

  “Nobody does,” the kid said, but he lifted the purple marbleized ball out of the gutter and gave it a push toward Billy.

  “Thanks,” Billy said, waving.

  The boy hiked up his jeans and started walking back. Maybe he didn’t notice anything. It was just another night at the bowling alley and we were just another bunch of bad bowlers.

  Billy bowled a 145. Tommy got an 80, mostly because he kept spinning around like Fred Flintstone and shouting “Yabba dabba doo” and then losing his ball in the next person’s lane. I got a 95, because I really stink. Drew bowled a 40 because he could barely lift the smallest ball we could find for him, even after his fingers felt better.

  Carl refused to finish after he sat on a hot dog and spent the last hour with his back to the wall, hiding the mustard stain on his ass.

  John didn’t play at all, because the little vent on the side of the ball return that blows air wasn’t working and he couldn’t dry his hands and Karen wouldn’t let him switch to the other lane.

  No, nobody wants a gutter ball.

  * * *

  I didn’t make my bed Friday morning because I was leaving. I had one knee on my bed and I was looking out the window. I had my coat and hat on. I knew that upstairs in the House all the boys were stripping their beds and washing up. Getting ready to leave for the weekend.

  I could watch for my mother’s car and watch what was going on with everyone else at the same time. My mom would come, I figured, because my dad had brought me. I was entertaining myself with thoughts of how distant I would act when she got here. I let the time pass with various daydreams of how I would get her to feel guilty. I was so deeply involved in my different scenarios, I let my eyes lock into a blurry stare until I could no longer see outside the window to the chairs and the ground and the house below, but I saw myself in the window’s reflection.

  I look like my father. And Cecily looks like our mom. Someone once told us that the first child always looks like the father on the outside but is more like the mother on the inside. And the second child is the opposite. It’s some kind of bioenergetic theory. But it seems to hold true with us Singers since I have my dad’s dark hair and tall body while Cecily is lighter in color and more petite, as my mom likes to say. It was sort of our family joke or family teasing—whenever one of us was a little too emotional or excitable or didn’t think before they said something, that was our mom’s trait. That was me.

  And if someone was a little too critical or withdrawn, that was more like Cecily and our dad.

  So for the longest time I remember thinking I didn’t have a choice. I have straight, dark hair. I was born that way. I have long toes, with the second toe stretching out past my big toe. So does my dad. I was born that way. And I was always the too-sensitive one.

  Cecily was the rational one, the one you want next to you in battle. She was only eight but Cecily was the one who made the obligatory call to Grandma because she knew it was the right thing to do. I was the one who stomped off when we decided to go to the Outback instead of the Olive Garden. (God, what was the matter with me?) I was too dramatic. Overwrought. I was born that way. I was the crazy one.

  Of course, they always change it when it fits their needs. I had my dad’s brains. But of course, so did Cecily. Our dad was the Ivy Leaguer. (We even know his SAT scores.) I had my mom’s athletic grace but my dad’s hand-eye coordination. (A volleyball scholarship looming.) My mom’s vision, because I didn’t need glasses, but my dad’s hearing, because he didn’t listen either.

  I don’t know.

  But lately, I just wanted to be me.

  * * *

  I still hadn’t seen my mom’s car pull up. I didn’t see Drew at the window, either. He must have been getting ready for the weekend. Friday-morning chores included stripping the beds and cleaning bathrooms. There was a cleaning woman who came once a week and cleaned the whole house but, Drew told me, she refused to clean the upstairs toilets.

  I was still kneeling on my unmade bed when Karen knocked, sort of, and then walked in.

  “You’ve got to strip your bed, Mia,” she said. “C’mon; it’s late.”

  Karen was dressed; looked like she was heading out. Then she stopped and looked at my suitcase and my coat.

  “Mia, do you think you’re going home?” she said.

  I remember, I think I remember, saying yes.

  “Mia, it’s a Mountain Laurel rule. The first month. No weekends home until one month. You must have known that. Didn’t you know that?”

  “What?” I said. I think I even turned around and looked behind me, as if she must have been talking to someone else. “What?”

  That’s all I remember before I went crazy.

  I found out Mountain Laurel wasn’t like A Beautiful Mind or Girt Interrupted, I Never Promised You a Rode Garden, or even One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Or any of those movies about crazy people and crazy places.

  There were no drugs. No needles. No bed straps. No big men in white coats.

  There was just Gretchen.

  It took Gretchen a really long time to make her way out of her house, across the lawn, and up the steep stairs of the nursery school and into my room. I even saw, through the window by my bed, Gretchen pause and stoop down to pet her big, husky dog. Like she had all the time in the world.

  Karen told me I could stay in my room the rest of the morning if I wanted. But she didn’t say it mean or angry, the way that sounds. She really meant it. She said if I needed to just be away from things for a while, she understood. She said she’d save me breakfast and she left.

  About an hour and a half later Gretchen came into my room. She stood in the doorway.

  “Mia, get up now. It’s time,” she said to me.

  “I don’t want to.” I was back under my covers with all my clothes on. My shoes on.

  “We often do things we don’t want to do,” Gretchen said. “That’s life.”

  I hate the That’s life explanation. It’s right up there with Because I said so. And my all-time favorite, Not everything’s fair.

  Then Gretchen walked all the way into the room. She sat on the end of the bed.

  “Mia, you’re going to be all right. But right now, all you have to work on is getting out of this bed and coming in for lunch.”

  Then Gretchen stood up. With a lot of effort, she went slowly down the stairs and across the frozen lawn and back into her house.

  My mother doesn’t believe we, but I can remember lots of things from before Cecily was born. I can remember when it was just me. I can’t remember my dad from then, at least not very well, but I can remember when it was just me and my mom.

  We were hiking at the nature center. I must have been about four years old. I can see it all perfectly, and I know I’ve been back there since, but that doesn’t explain why I remember that day so well. It was fall, early fall, and still hot. I was in shorts and my mother had this big, huge dress on. She was pregnant. Cecily was born in October, so she must have been pretty far along. But I don’t remember her big and fat. To me my mother was always beautiful.

  We walked along the trail really slowly. Like there was nothing we had to do. Nowhere we had to be. It was long before elementary school, even before
Tumble Bugs Academy or the Music for Kiddies classes. It was hundreds of years before homework and grades and standardized tests.

  Before I could even have dreamed of a place like Mountain Laurel.

  My mother says I couldn’t possibly remember that day, but I do. We stopped at every trail marker. I would run ahead to read the number even though I couldn’t read. I would just say anything, any number that popped into my head, and my mother would agree. Even though I knew I wasn’t really reading, pleasing her made me feel good. I remember that clearly.

  The water was low in the stream that ran under the wooden bridge, but we sat and dangled our legs over the edge and watched the bugs flying low over the mud. Then we got up, but only when I said I wanted to. We took the longer fork in the trail that day, the left fork that we had never taken before—the Lollipop Trail.

  I was on a field trip years and years later when I found out that lollipop referred to the shape of the trail. The first part of the trail was one long straight walk—the stick. Then it looped around in a big circle—the candy part. But back then, that day with my mom, I thought it meant there were lollipops to be found.

  Lollipops! Maybe on the ground or hanging from the trees. Lollipops. Maybe they would be just lying along the side of the narrow dirt trail. I never questioned it, so I never asked. I just kept my eyes open and for the longest time I assumed we were both looking for the same thing.

  * * *

  “I’m really sorry,” Drew fold me.

  “What for?” I said.

  “I’m going soon. My dad is coming to pick me up. I’m sorry you have to stay. I heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “I heard you crying.”

  “I wasn’t crying,” I said, because I hadn’t been. “I never cry.”

  “Never?” He looked at me.

  I smiled at Drew because he looked sadder than I did.

  I had been sitting by the beach, freezing, although the sun was strong and warm. I came down here right after that warm and fuzzy visit from Gretchen, after I ate the breakfast that Karen had saved for me. I didn’t want to watch everyone else going home. There was a wooden dock left in the middle of the roped-off swimming area of the pond. It rocked slowly with the wind; otherwise everything was still.

  “That’s okay, Drew,” I said. “It can’t be that bad here over the weekend. Hey, it can’t be worse.” I surprised myself; I laughed.

  “It’s not,” Drew said. He sat down beside me.

  “Have you ever stayed over the weekend?” I asked. “Once. When I first got here. There’s a one-month rule or something like that.”

  “Yeah, I know. I guess it’s like at camp when they won’t let you call your mother for the first two weeks, no matter how homesick you are.”

  “They do that?”

  I could tell Drew had never been to sleep-away camp, and all of a sudden it seemed like a ludicrous comparison anyway.

  “Never mind.”

  We both stared out at the water. Again, I noticed all the tall pine trees on the far side. So perfectly aligned.

  Someone had made a forest. Pine needles covered the entire hillside, an amber carpet, almost perfect.

  “They let you watch TV,” Drew told me. “On weekends.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, and you don’t have to eat in the dining room.

  You eat in the kitchen. It’s warmer in there.”

  “Does Gretchen let you keep your shoes on?”

  “No, not that I’ve heard.” Drew lowered his head as if he had disappointed me.

  “Hey, it’s not your fault.”

  “Tommy told me once they went to the movies in town,” Drew went on. His fingers moved constantly while he was talking. He had shifted closer to me until he was touching the hem of my coat.

  “What movie did they see?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. I don’t think Drew noticed, but he was running the fringe of my scarf through his fingers while he talked.

  We both heard a car beeping. It sounded far away. The dip down toward the water muffled any sound and you couldn’t see the House or the barn or the nursery school from here.

  “Is that for you?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Maybe,” Drew said. But he didn’t move. He was still touching my scarf, gently.

  “Is it your dad?”

  “I guess so,” Drew said. “Will you be here when I get back?”

  “Right here,” I told him.

  Only then did Drew stand up. He seemed content and took off running. He shouted good-bye just before he made it over the crest of the hill, and he was gone.

  * * *

  Mountain Laurel.

  I hate it here. I can’t remember the last time I felt so homesick. Sleep-away camp, maybe. No, this is worse. No comparison. Camp was hot.

  Here it’s freezing.

  * * *

  I had gone to camp every summer since third grade. And they really don’t let you call your mom. It was funny, because a lot of kids from my town went to sleep-away camp. It was like the thing to do. Parents started talking about it in January. I could tell some camps were better than others, but I could never tell which were the better ones and which weren’t. They were all really expensive.

  All I know is that even moms who were completely overprotective (like mine), even moms who wouldn’t let their kids sleep at someone’s house because that family watched TV on school nights, sent their kids to sleep-away camp. Moms who sent their kids to school with soy milk, moms who kept their kids in car seats until they were seven—they all sent their kids to sleep-away camp.

  I always thought the joke was on them because everything happens at camp. Everything.

  Lying.

  Stealing.

  Sneaking out.

  Food fights.

  Shaving.

  Piercing.

  Kissing.

  It hadn’t happened again since, but I was kissed at sleep-away camp two years ago by a boy named Jared Job. (That was really his name.)

  Jared’s sister Jenna was my best camp friend and bunk mate. They also had a younger sister, Joely, who went to the day camp. They were all nicknamed Jay Jay.

  Get it? Oh, brother.

  It was the last day of camp. Everyone had their stuff all packed, sleeping bags rolled and bunks swept clean. Most everyone was milling around the mess hall waiting for the bus or for their parents to come and get them. That’s when Jenna told me her brother liked me. She had a note from him, folded into a tiny tight square.

  “He likes you,” Jenna told me.

  “I don’t even know him,” I answered.

  “You’ve known him as long as you’ve known me.”

  That was true. Jenna was a year younger than me but she was in the same grade and we were in the same bunk. We met two weeks before, on our first night when we both wanted to go to sleep but the other girls in our bunk were talking and playing music. At the same time we both went outside to complain to our senior counselor, Melinda. Jenna and I had an instant nerd bonding. And we were best friends by morning.

  It happens like that at camp. Every microcosm of time takes on greater meaning.

  A whole year can be squished down into a week. An hour into a minute. Because at camp, time is measured out for you right from the start. Before you even get there you know you have only two weeks. Or one month. Maybe two. It’s like having a terminal illness.

  I unwrapped my tiny square note. It said:

  Do you like me?

  Yes or No.

  Circle one.

  Jenna was looking on, waiting.

  “Are you sure this is from your brother?” I asked.

  Jenna assured me she had seen him write it and fold it up, with instructions to give it to me, and depending on my answer, I was to meet Jared in bunk number five in ten minutes.

  Microcosms.

  Ten minutes later, I was making out with Jared Job for no other reason than he said he liked me.

  He was nice en
ough. He asked me if he could kiss me after he read my response.

  Do you like me?

  I had circled Yes.

  We pressed our lips together and kept them there for nearly twenty-five minutes, barely moving. I felt absolutely nothing. Except the sharp metal of my braces digging into the soft flesh inside my lips.

  * * *

  Mountain Laurel was different on the weekend, completely different. It was more about who didn’t get to go home rather than who did.

  Billy went home. Carl and Tommy went home. So did some of the other kids—I still got their names mixed up. Drew went home. Angel, that boy who never comes to class, stayed, except he spent all of his time somewhere with Sam. And when he did come into the House for dinner or lunch he wore a tool belt, exactly like Sam’s. It had hammers and a screwdriver hanging from it. Gretchen made him take it off and hang it in the mud-room every time. And every time he’d walk in with it again, just so everyone would see it, and she’d make him hang it up again.

  John stayed that weekend, but I got the feeling he didn’t always stay. He kept asking Gretchen questions about what was expected of him on weekends. What time would dinner be? What time was bedtime? Where could he go? What would he do? Where did Sam live? Where did Maggie go? Where did Mr. Simone go? Did Mr. Simone watch 20/20, because he said he did.

  Then Saturday morning, John asked me when my birthday was.

  I answered, “May eighteenth.”

  There didn’t seem any harm in answering, although I couldn’t think of a reason why he would ask me that. I kept looking toward the door, hoping someone else would walk in. I didn’t want to be alone in the room with him. We were both standing on the same side of the long table. I wished I was nearer to the door.

  “May eighteenth,” John repeated. He straightened his back and his eyes kind of shifted back and forth. He never looked directly at you.

  “Perry Como. Czar Nicholas the Second. Margot Fonteyn. Frank Capra. That’s all I can think of.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “They were also born on May eighteenth. And Reggie Jackson.”

  I didn’t know who Perry Como was or Frank Capra or Margot whatever, but I had heard of Nicholas II of Russia from social studies. And Reggie Jackson was a baseball player, I think.