Читать книгу Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb - George Rabasa - Страница 11

The van braked at an intersection and I was back in the moment, debouching from Hyacinth onto Snelling Avenue, the previous serenity of the residential street blown apart by the grinding truck and bus traffic heading toward the corner with University, easily the most polluted intersection in Minnesota. I wanted to remember everything: the peaceful vision of darkened houses, their windows lit by TV sets, was overwhelmed by the gas station, the liquor store, the incongruously green-tiled commercial building, further west the Turf Club bar, where I hoped one day to party, and the Keys Café, where I hoped one day to die with one of their sticky buns in my hand. But then, instead of heading north on the freeway, Harley exited toward the northern burbs.

“Are we picking up any other patients?”

“Clients,” he corrected me automatically.

“Pardonez-moi, a client!” The trip would be more interesting than usual.

The term, preferred at many modern treatment facilities, was supposed to protect our dignity, which becomes a precious thing indeed when you lose your mind. It means not getting laughed at when you confess to a desire to eat poop. Or insulted when you admit to lusting for your sibling. Or derided when you refuse to acknowledge the existence of a Higher Power. As if the Big HP’s main occupation was the creation of twelve-step deals to dry up alcoholics, clean up addicts, slim down fatties. What a drag it must be supervising all those meetings every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Loiseaux thinks we all have a direct line to the HP if we’re willing to dial up. Blah, blah, blah, my name is Adam Webb and I’m ambiguous, ambidextrous, ambivalent, ambipamby.

As a Marxist, for me to accept the existence of the HP would be intellectual sacrilege. I said as much during my first Confession. I considered the HP little more than a dope dealer, a pimp, a grifter. It was my goal to kill him one day. I would be the great liberator, the big bogeyman slayer, the universal unshackler. Oh, man! What a job. My weapons would be the blinding light of my intellect, the purveying of truth, the laser beam that would shoot all the way to the center of the universe.

When asked years later in a questionnaire what I hoped to accomplish during my stay at Loiseaux’s, I answered, “To kill the Higher Power.” That got the good doctor’s attention. I was thirteen and already considered a kind of prodigy in the mental arena. Surrounded by autistic, thumb-sucking, stuttering, hallucinating, drooling misfits, I was a beacon of rational eccentricity. Star of the show, role model, a case for the textbooks. None of that went to my head. I conducted myself with modesty and self-control and the dignity befitting a client.

Dr. Clara was crazy about me. I was coddled and humored, allowed to read Marx, worship Kali, dress up, eat raw vegan. Once, in a rare candid moment, the good doctor revealed that my mother and father did not realize what a gem they had in me. I agreed, happily.

We do have one stop before heading out,” Harley admitted as he bypassed the ramp and stayed on Snelling toward New Canaan.

“What’s his name?”

“She goes by Miss Entropia.”

“How cute,” I exclaimed, already picturing a creature of chaos and destruction. “What’s her real name?”

Harley shrugged because such details are none of my business. Still, the man has a need to talk. “Francine, but she won’t answer to anything but Miss Entropia. Can you believe that? Her parents are Felicia and Harold Haggard. I know this much because I’m supposed to check ID to match their names to the court’s commitment order.”

“Ah, an involuntary. Maybe a spitter, a scratcher, a kicker,” I speculated. “Are you going to strap her down?” I love the idea of watching a client resist. They show a spirit and a sense of justice that I don’t have. From the beginning, I had been a passive case. Take me away, bring me home, take me away, bring me home. This was my fourth trip back to Loiseaux’s. I knew the way so well that, once I got my license, I could get a job driving the van. I knew I would provide a better ride than Happy Harley does. Stimulating conversation. Better music. A scenic route. The only thing lacking would be Happy’s irrepressible good cheer.

We stopped in front of the Haggards’, a pillared and porticoed faux colonial set back from the street and approached through an ornamental gate into a circular driveway. Outside, a Benz and a monstrous Land Rover stood ready to rumble. It was obvious, from his choice of vehicles, that Mr. Haggard suffered from small-penis syndrome. Nothing like raw horsepower to bolster the self-esteem of the limp-dicked. The covered portico was ringed with lights, blinking cheerfully as if announcing to the world that sanity and good cheer dwelled within. What a hoax. I pictured the Haggards as a family of psychic mutants, incestuous, abusive, Republican. Within dwelled violence and mendacity.

I like rich people, actually. Their children have interesting mental conditions. Not your standard ADDs or ADHDs that are easily medicated with the usual household drugs but disturbances in a more sociopathic vein. Anger issues. Sex issues. Authority issues. Mainly, my kind of issues. Issues that make you a person of some depth. Issues that make you an astute observer of the human world, a provocative conversationalist, a skilled manipulator of the powers that be. Beats knee jerking and head banging. I couldn’t wait to meet Miss Entropia.

Harley parked the van in front of the covered portico, but, true to procedure, he stayed inside. He turned on the CB and announced, “Pickup to Base, Pickup to Base. I’m at the site. Over.”

“Base to Pickup. We’re calling the client’s parents. Over.”

“I’m on it. Over and out.”

I loved those old-fashioned CB radios. They made everything sound so military.

Harley signaled his presence with three taps on the horn, as was the usual first step when doing an involuntary. The porch lights came on, the house suddenly awakening. Following the established procedure, someone would appear at the entrance, give the go-ahead nod, and then leave the door unlocked. The family would try to reason with their kid, who might have locked herself inside a bathroom with a medicine cabinet full of downers, or held a gun to her head, or shackled herself to a bedpost. Much conversation might ensue before Happy Harley was brought into the scene.

Once they decided they needed him, the lights would blink three times. Harley would rush in with a blanket that he would place over the involuntary’s head and shoulders to confuse and disorient her. Then, he’d quickly lead her out of the house and push her inside the van. He’d strap her to the backseat and then slide the side door closed with a bang. Sometimes, if the involuntary was a young kid, he’d wrap him up in his wrestler’s bear hug and bodily lift him into the vehicle, all the time cooing endearments and positive thoughts. The whole maneuver would take less than sixty seconds. I’d seen it happen. This guy was a paragon of fluid coordination, a graceful thing to see.

Meanwhile, he warned me to stay put and not get in the way. “This will be easy,” he said, “if you don’t try to be helpful.”

The lights in a front window blinked three times, and the race was on. Harley was out of the van, a folded blanket tucked under his arm. Somebody opened the front door for him, and he didn’t slow his stride; moments later he emerged with his massive arms hugging a slight figure who, under the blanket that covered her head and chest, was wearing a shapeless black dress, ripped stockings, and pointy black ankle boots. I notice fashion touches.

The girl, I was glad to see, was putting up some resistance. She almost wriggled out of Happy’s embrace, and even as he used both arms to hold her, her feet inside their sharp-toed boots were kicking a quick beat on his shins. From inside the blanket I could make out a muffled stream of colorful complaining. He strapped her in with a yank on the seatbelt and slid the van door shut.

In a moment of inspiration, one of those impulses that rise like jewels from the brain’s primal core, I clicked shut all the door locks as Hansen was going around the van to the driver’s side. It was the loudest click I had ever made. Harley heard it, too. He tested the handle on the door, patted his pockets, then found himself peering in dismay at the keys dangling from the ignition slot. He met my eyes through the windshield with a cold stare.

The locking of the doors impressed Miss Entropia, who had shaken off the blanket to reveal a pale face crowned by a mop of black hair. She stared at me curiously out of her raccoon eyes. Our first meeting, and already there was a surge of energy between us. In an instant the three of us, Happy, Miss Entropia and I, understood that the power balance among us had shifted with a single click.

“You are so crazy,” she said, more in wonder than in praise.

“You were expecting someone normal?”

“I wasn’t expecting another patient.”

“We’re clients, actually.”

“Right. And that guy is not a goon, and Institute Loiseaux is not an insanitarium.”

“It’s not so bad. Most of us are really, really functional. ADD, ADHD, OCD. Take your pick,” I said, enjoying the status that came from experience. “The hardest period is the first ten weeks. No phone, no online, no TV, no games, no chats, no free time. They schedule you down to your toilet trips. Then you get used to having your life nicely arranged. Some of us are not good with decisions. I’ve been there off and on for a couple years.”

“And you’re glad to be going back, right?”

I hadn’t quite figured out glad, I wanted to tell her. I was not happy at home, certainly not with Tedious tormenting me, Iris betraying me, Dad retreating into his brown fedora, and Mother sweet but clueless. “Going back? That’s okay.”

Harley was pounding on the sides of the van, shaking it, jerking at door handles, as if his wrestler’s grip could intimidate the doors into opening.

“You are in so much trouble.” His shouting was muffled by the closed windows.

I shrugged and gave him a disarming smile, the one I use when I can’t explain myself and hope that circumstances will excuse me. In this case, I could just surrender and open the van and cut the damage. Ha, ha, just kidding.

Miss Entropia in the backseat had wriggled out of the belts and was trying to pry open the grill that separated the front from the back. “I don’t like it back here,” she said. “It feels like I’m in a cage already.”

Happy had stopped his yelling and pounding and was marching toward the house. He had clearly come up with an idea, and while I waited for the results of his brainstorm, I devoted my whole attention to Miss Entropia. Her eyes were squinting, her lips pressed tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her fury was downright cosmic.

I told her to stop pounding on the grill while I figured out a way to take it off. The panel was latched to the door posts, and it was easy to unfasten them and then lower the grill to the floor.

“See?” I held out my hands to show how simple the operation was when you put mind over brawn.

“You are smug,” she said, her expression softening.

I moved over to the driver’s seat so the girl could clamber over the back and sit next to me. Placing my hands on the steering wheel, I could barely see out the windshield, but I thought it would be fun to drive the van, even if just around the circle.

“People really call you Miss Entropia?”

“Pia is fine,” she said. “Ms. Entropia is a formal name. I let some people call me Pia.”

“So I should be flattered?”

“Yeah. But don’t be a bonehead about it.”

“What does your family call you?”

“Francine.”

“You don’t look like a Francine.”

“Thanks. I don’t answer to it.”

“My name is Adam Webb.” I used a confidential tone of voice, as if afraid to be overheard. It was all for show because everyone knows my name is Adam. But since Pia and I were exchanging confidences, I wanted her to believe she was getting privileged info.

“Most people,” I added, “call me something else. Like my older brother, Ted, calls me Jerk-off. Iris, a kind of cousin, calls me Shorty. Mother and Father call me Problem Child.” It’s about then that I noticed that with her black look, from lip gloss and mascara to spiky black hair, Pia was as close to a living manifestation of the Goddess Kali as I had ever encountered. After all those nights praying to the deity, with her multiple arms, her earrings made of skulls, her belt of severed hands, here we were actually chatting.

Even as I pictured the goddess sowing chaos, a look of sadness clouded Pia’s features. The goddess was showing her vulnerable side. Nobody could be a full-time deity and still function in the world.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I can’t believe my parents would send me to a facility for nutcases.”

“That’s parents for you.”

“Honestly, I didn’t think I was ready to be institutionalized. If that’s the word.”

“It is,” I said. “The very word.” Still, I wanted to reassure her that things at the ’Tute wouldn’t be as bad as she feared. “Some of us get treated better than at home. The food is varied, the company is interesting, the schooling is good. You learn useful skills like how to shake hands without breaking someone’s bones, how to keep from screaming when that’s what you hear inside your head, how to talk without spitting, chew without smacking, sneeze without spraying.”

“I really, really don’t want to go.”

I started to tell her again that things would be better than she expected, that she might even grow to like the place, as some of us do, when I was startled by insistent pounding on the passengerside door.

“Are you just going to ignore him?” asked Pia as Harley’s pummeling shook the van.

“I don’t think it’s for us.”

“Ha!” She had a way of succinctly reacting to apparent absurdity. “Of course it’s for us. Or rather for you … Adam.” The sound of my name sent a shiver to the back of my neck.

Harley walked to the front of the van and held up a plaid coat for Pia to see.

“He brought your coat out,” I said. “That was thoughtful.”

“I hate that coat. My parents know that.”

He turned his back to us, but I could see that he was talking on a cell phone. I imagined he was calling the ’Tute for a second set of keys. That gave us at least an hour of fun inside the van. Good luck, Happy, I thought. Try to explain that the inmates have taken over the asylum’s wheels. “So,” I said, as if continuing a conversation that had been interrupted, “are you into entropy or misanthropy?”

She seemed amused for the first time. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”

“How about both? Chaos and hatred simultaneously.”

“Not so simple,” she said. “The Pia part of Entropia connotes devotion, piety. So go figure, Geniusboy.”

“My name’s Adam.” I did not need another moniker.

Pia grabbed the microphone from the CB radio, “Calling Adam, calling Adam.”

“Roger and out.” I clicked off.

“Are you old enough to drive?” she asked.

“I know how to drive,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

This struck Pia as being unbearably funny. “Oh, my! Hardy-hardy-har.” Even if she was mocking me, I enjoyed the attention.

“How about California?” she added. “We’d better do something before the driver calls the cops.”

“I don’t think the Institute would like the publicity,” I said. “We’d be on Channel 11 in minutes. But it will take them an hour to send someone with an extra key.”

Happy sounded tired as he shouted toward the windshield, “Hey, Mr. Problem.” He added another name to my collection. “Unlock the door or I’m calling the cops.”

“Great. I’ll call the media.” I waved the CB mike for him to see through the windshield. There was not even a wave as he shuffled off. “Later, alligator!” I sang.

This time Pia cracked up. “After a while …” Her laugh, a clear peal of delight, emboldened me. I sat up and clutched the wheel with both hands, assuming control of our hijacked vehicle.

“You don’t look like you know what to do,” she said as mockery edged back into her voice.

“Watch.” I turned the key, and the van came to life with a pleasing rumble. I pulled the seat closer to the steering wheel until I could reach the pedals with the tip of my foot. I stretched as high as I could to get a better view out the windshield, shifted to D, and we were off, rolling slowly on the gravel driveway.