Leroy Mussen was almost purple. “I said to get the fuck off camera!”
Gee. No one must have heard that order, either.
The weatherman was not to be outdone. He stepped into the frame and said, “Me, too. I support you, Polly. We should all support you, including Leroy Mussen.”
The sports announcer swiveled in her chair. “Polly, I’m with you, too. Good luck. I know you can do this.” She reached out a hand and squeezed Polly’s hand. Polly got all teary and had to wipe her eyes, her chin shaking.
I put my hand over my mouth so I didn’t cry. I’m such a wuss.
Leroy Mussen was having a purple fit. “I said go to commercial, dammit! You stupid people, move, move, move!”
No one moved. There was definitely vengeance in the air that night.
Then Grant smiled at the camera, as did Polly through her tears, and the weatherman and sportscaster all smiled too and said, “Good night, Portland!”
Leroy Mussen was flaming red-hot and out of control. Raving. “I will sue you, Polly, do you hear me? I will sue you for breach of contract. Get a lawyer, because you’re outta here! Did you hear me? You’re the fuck out of here.”
He did not get any further. Grant grabbed him and shoved him up against a wall. “You. Will. Shut. Up. Now.”
Leroy started to struggle and curse, but he is a short, thin man and his face was turning red-purple. He did not appreciate Grant, manly and strong, showing all his employees who was physically dominant. He swore something vile.
“When you stop swearing, I’ll let you down,” Grant said, voice reasonable, “but you must promise not to verbally abuse Polly.”
Leroy swore again. Grant lifted him up higher, his little feet dangling. Leroy had no choice—everyone was staring, giggling, smirking as he was hung up on the wall like a prisoner in medieval times. Leroy closed his pinched mouth.
Grant waited ten seconds, then lowered Leroy’s feet.
“Both of you,” Leroy blustered. “Both of you will lose your jobs, Grant and Polly. And you, too!” he screamed at the weatherman, news staff, and sportscaster. “Did you see that? Did you see that?”
Some people sure had the giggles.
“I didn’t see nothin’,” Bertie, the camerawoman, who was one of Polly’s best friends, said. “All I saw was a short man screaming hysterically at Portland’s most popular anchors.”
“Nope. Me neither,” Jules, an associate producer, said. He had five kids and a stay-at-home wife. It was very brave of him to take a stand and risk being fired. “I didn’t see anything except you destroying staff morale.”
“I didn’t see a thing,” Jenny, a reporter, said. “Nothing except you throwing another fit and using the F word and harassing Polly because she has anorexia. Why would you harass a woman who has anorexia?”
Leroy glared, his beady eyes swiveling from one person to the next. He realized he was cornered. Perhaps at that second he understood how deeply well hated he was at the station. Not a person stood for him, especially not Grant, was steaming mad three feet away and said, “You’re a moldy piece of crap.”
“You’re all gonna be outta here,” Leroy warned, his bottom wiggling in indignation. “All of you. All of you!” He came up on his toes, finger pointing, swaying back and forth.
“I don’t want to work for a station that puts the health of their people behind ratings,” Grant said. “I don’t want to work for a man who is so obnoxious and uncaring that he’d have someone who clearly has an eating disorder working here instead of being in a clinic.”
“Me, neither,” I heard, all around.
Leroy glared, his eyes beady, then threw his fists in the air and said, “You’ll regret this. All of you. Start scanning the want ads for jobs as trash collectors.” He stomped out, butt wagging.
But that was untrue.
There was only one person who lost his job that night, and that was Leroy Mussen.
The second Polly and Grant went off the air, the phones lit up as if a spaceship had landed on the Willamette and the e-mails came pouring in, the complaints loud and clear. The newscast hit YouTube, the national air waves picked it up, and the howl of protest at a newswoman getting fired because she had committed herself to a clinic to conquer her anorexia was deafening and furious. Advertisers threatened to pull their money quicker than you could say, “Leroy is moldy crap.”
The owners were so backed into a corner that they fired Leroy immediately, and by the next night the lead story was…themselves. Shi Makowski, the owner, apologized for the “misunderstanding.” Polly Barrett was not going to be fired! Not at all! They loved Polly! In fact, Polly was to take all the time she needed and they would still pay her full salary and pay for her stay at the clinic! The station couldn’t wait for Polly to come back, when she wanted to, when she was well and healthy and happy. Her job was still there for her. The door was always open. She still had her job, people, do you hear that? They wished her the best. Please. Please! Keep watching our station. By the way, Mr. Mussen has decided he wants to spend more time with his family so he will not be working for the station anymore. Not one more day. Go, Polly! Up with Polly, down with Leroy!
So Polly kept her job.
And she kept her place at the clinic.
She would come out only to attend Herbert and Aunt Janet’s nightmare party and then Lance’s Hard Rock Party. She’d get a weekend pass. Then back in she’d go.
Afterward, she said she wouldn’t have missed the anniversary party for the world.
Me, neither, I told her as I drove her back to the clinic afterward.
Oh, that party.
It was a doozer.
If we had only known what was going to go down….
Jake and I were talking by phone, he was joining me for walks, we were e-mailing from work, we were…dating! Me, dating Jake!
I told Zena about our dinner date on a boat on the Willamette when we were eating lunch at Pioneer Courthouse Square and watched her eyebrows rise straight up into her bangs. “Good for you, you lusty loon,” she said. “Don’t forget that you can get sparkly colored condoms nowadays.”
“A, I don’t need condoms now and B, please, Zena, let me envision a red-striped condom.”
“Birth control is archaic. The pill makes me nauseated. Diaphragms are a smelly mess. I don’t want anyone giving me a shot in my arm, an IUD freaks me out, I won’t put a ring in my vagina, and condoms are strong tube Baggies. Who wants to wear a Baggie even if there’s stars on it?”
“Let’s take this one up with the president of the United States. Get it on his agenda.” I handed her some cherries. She gave me a yogurt.
“Did you know they’ve also come out with something a man can put over his penis and it vibrates? It’s a vibrating penis. Now, who sits home and thinks up this type of thing? And wouldn’t a guy feel that his unit was going to be vibrated right off with that on?”
“Do you think insurance would cover it if it did fall off?”
“Oh, heck no, the insurance company would say that it was a cosmetic procedure, unnecessary….”
I felt this rush in my body whenever I thought of Jake—although not in a red sparkle condom—which was all the time. I was on fire, even though I was so worried about Polly, sick of my uncle, and despairing about the Atherton case.
Jake was separate from the rest of my life. He was a gift, a break. He was just for me. He was behind another door, that door was yellow and bright, and everything else was behind other doors. He was joy for me.
He was joy.
“Want me to run a check on him?” Zena bit into an apple. “You know how I did on your amour who had a thing for fast planes and Central America?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t be stupid, Stevie. Most men are utter, undeniable creeps.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t get hurt here, Stevie. It’s plain dumb. Don’t let your vagina think for you. A vagina will always get you in trouble when you let it near you
r brain synapses. Let me check him out.”
It was the “don’t get hurt” part that got to me. I nodded.
I had a job interview Thursday evening at six o’clock to be a chicken.
The manager was a round, chipper, funny sort of nerd who clearly got his identity from working at Aunt Bettadine’s Chicken Dinners.
“We’re a family,” Marty Pingle said during our interview, pushing wire-rimmed glasses up his long, beaklike nose. “Family!”
“A happy family!” I enthused.
We chatted for a bit about my job at Poitras and Associates and how I wanted to pay off my medical debt.
He nodded soberly. “I understand, I do. We chickens have to stick together.” He brightened. “Do you like chicken?”
I assured him I loved chicken. Chicken sandwiches, fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken in my pasta, chicken strips, chicken salad…
“How about a cluck-cluck chicken test run?” he asked me. This involved me getting dressed up in the chicken outfit to see if I was chicken enough.
He grinned and handed me a giant chicken head.
The chicken head went over my head. The chicken head had millions of brown and gold feathers; big, yellow, maniacal eyes; and a gold beak. I put it over my head. I could barely see out of the eyeholes.
Mr. Pingle helped me get into the rest of my full-bodied, multi-feathered chicken outfit, then turned me around and made sure that the back of my chicken head was in line with my chicken body. Over my tennis shoes I wore red chicken feet. I flapped my arms and tilted my head back and forth.
“You’re a natural!” Mr. Pingle shouted. “A natural.”
I stomped my chicken feet.
“I knew you would be one of our best chickens!” he announced, stomping back. “I knew it! Cluck cluck!”
I clucked, clucked, clucked at him.
He clucked back, did a stiff chicken dance.
I danced back at him with my red chicken feet.
He handed me a sign that said, “Chicken meals only $8.99!” and turned me toward the door. I was to dance about for thirty minutes at the corner, “to get a feel for being a chicken before the grand event!”
I stood at the corner, waved my wings, and held up the sign.
I passed the cluck-cluck chicken test and I had my second job. Friday nights for four hours and four hours each on Saturday and Sunday. I would make $10.00 an hour.
I sighed.
Cluck cluck.
Zena dropped an entire box of condoms on my desk. They were the fun type, colorful, sparkly. “I checked out your friend Jake Stockton. Go ahead. He’s cleaner than a whistle. Now let him whistle your whistle.”
I leaned back in my chair, threw my arms and legs up in the air, and wiggled. I leaned too far back, though, and fell all the way over, somersault style.
I suppose this is dating in this century. You don’t just take men’s word…you take what you find on the computer about them as “word.”
Zena grabbed a condom and started blowing it up with her mouth.
I ripped it out of her hand.
I was ready to rock and roll in my garden. I’d used two-by-twelve-foot lumber and angle brackets to create the beds. I had used a soil–compost organic mix. I knew that I would have to plant my seeds and seedlings a week or two apart from each other so I wouldn’t be buried in lettuce all at once and have none weeks later. I knew I had to figure out which were weeds to pull and which were vegetables and how much water the whole thing needed.
I squished a gardening hat on my head. It wasn’t yellow. That I could not do.
I dug into my raised beds and prepared to plant seedlings for tomatoes, squash, zucchini, radishes, carrots, peas, beans, etc., so I, Stevie Barrett, could have a vegetable garden with no corn. No corn at all.
17
Ashville, Oregon
When Helen returned from the mental ward with the reddish-brown stain on the back of her dress, she refused to shower or enter the bathroom alone. She insisted that Grandma or Grandpa or me stand inside the door frame, door open, to “guard her from the voices.” We initially turned our backs to give her privacy, but that made her cry out in the most pathetic voice, “They’re coming. They’re coming. Help me, help me.” She would leap off the toilet, midstream, if there was the slightest indication we were leaving.
“Look at me,” she’d beg, scared, sometimes shaking, way too skinny.
I went eye to eye with her the whole time she was doing her business. I don’t think she noticed my tears at all.
“Don’t leave. I can’t be alone.” Then she would lower her voice and hiss, “Barry might be coming, Barry might be coming, Barry might be coming. He’s always after Tonya.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. I still played with stuffed animals.
“And me,” she breathed, nervous. “But especially Tonya.”
“Who’s Tonya?”
“Tonya. You know. With the long brown hair and the big lips? She cries all the time.”
“Oh. She’s sad.”
“Yes, she’s sad because of Barry. He’s mean. I hit him when he grabbed her. That’s how I got that.” She pointed at her wrist cast. “Then we both had to go in the dark room with the pads. They turned off the lights.”
I studied the wood floor, not understanding, scared, confused.
“Look at me! Look at me!” she shouted, fear crushing her. “I don’t want Barry back.” She hobbled up, her sprained foot hurting her, and wiped.
Helen insisting that someone watch her while she did her business on the toilet was especially hard for my grandpa. He was an old-fashioned gentleman, and a woman’s business was a woman’s business. A lady was a lady and should be treated as a lady at all times.
But Grandpa did it. He stood in the bathroom door, his wide shoulders almost the width of the doorway, his cowboy boots spread apart, and he watched his daughter urinate and wipe her bottom, often saying, “Yuck. I’ve been poisoned with brown.”
I don’t think Helen noticed his tears, either.
“What did they do to her?”
I was supposed to be in bed, but I had come downstairs for milk. Grandma’s anguished cry made me sit down in a tight ball on the stairs to listen.
“She’s worse than she was before,” Grandpa said, his voice gruff. Through the doorway I saw that they were holding hands across the table. They always held hands. Good or bad, my grandparents always held hands. “This new medication isn’t working any better than the old stuff. In fact, I think it’s increased her paranoia, her suspicions, her fear…” Grandpa brought their clasped hands to his forehead and Grandma leaned toward him.
“You’ve talked to Chad?”
Chad was Grandpa’s best friend and our lawyer.
“Yes, I talked to him. He says the head of staff there is watching Barry and they’ll have an answer for us soon.”
“And what about this Tonya she keeps crying about, telling us we have to save Tonya? I can’t bear the thought of this Tonya being hurt. Honestly, Albert, I know we don’t believe most of what Helen says, but this has a ring of truth to it. She’s honestly scared to death for her friend Tonya.”
“Chad says he’s trying to get a report on her, too.”
“I can’t believe this. We met Helen’s doctors. We met the nurses. They seemed competent; they seemed as if they knew what they were doing. They reassured us she would be safe, that they would try new medications…. She’s crumbling, her mind has crumbled.”
I saw Grandpa’s huge shoulders sag. “I’m afraid you might be right, Glory. I’m afraid you might be right.”
Grandma wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and then I heard a sound I never wanted to hear again: Grandpa, strong and mighty Grandpa, who ran a company and a farm, sobbing.
He sobbed and sobbed, shaking, rocking, keening, and Grandma joined him, her tears running with his, the two most miserable people I have ever seen in my life clinging to each other.
I crept upstairs, cra
wled deep into my covers, and cried till my eyes swelled.
The light of the moon shone on my broken frog.
“They put the dead people in cans.”
Helen rocked on her rocker as me, Grandma, and Grandpa turned to her in shock.
The sun was going down and it made the sky behind our cornstalks turn into brilliant golds and yellows and oranges. We had Helen’s favorite opera record on, too, and she was singing along.
She had let me and Grandma get her in the shower to wash her hair earlier that day, although I had to get in there with her with my bathing suit on because “Barry might come, Barry might come. I think he’s spying on me here.”
“You need to eat more cookies,” I’d told her, water streaming down our faces. She was too skinny and I could see her ribs.
“I’m not going to eat brown cookies,” she told me.
“How about pink?”
She nodded. “Okay to pink cookies.”
We made pink sugar cookies.
She ate one of the ones I’d decorated. “I did that one,” I told her.
Surprisingly, she smiled at me. “Very delicious.”
Grandma sniffled when she heard that.
The day would have ended so well, one of our best, had not Helen decided to tell us, “They put the dead people in cans.”
Grandpa put his beer down. Grandma put her drawing of the cornfields aside.
“What do you mean, Helen?” Grandma asked.
Helen continued rocking in her chair. “At the Bad Place”—that’s what she called the mental ward—“there was a man named Andrew. They put him in a can.”
I put my pink heart cookie down on my plate. I wasn’t so hungry anymore.
No one said anything for a while.
“I saw him. I saw Andrew in a can.”
“Do you mean that Andrew went to a room by himself? Do you call the room a can?” Grandma asked, knitting her hands together.
“No. That’s not it. Andrew died.”