Lizard People (2 page)

This is the second time I have seen her paint her face with red lipstick. Mom believes that Lizards hate red. She also believes that you can identify a Lizard Person only by looking deep inside his or her mouth and seeing where the human costume ends and the actual Lizard begins.

I don't mean that Dad made Mom go off her rocker. She was that way before. Sometimes she got so lethargic she couldn't even get out of bed for a week. Sometimes she thought that TV shows were talking about her. But the red on the face and the Lizard thing is a recent development.

Dad said there used to be long-term hospitals that would help a person like Mom, but they got closed, so there's nothing like that now.

I'm going to make Dad come back and deal with this.

In the Ozone Layer

When
Mom got released and came home a couple of days later, I left school early and was there to meet her. She looked snowed.

“New medication?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mom said. “I'm sleepy. I'm going to bed.”

“Want anything to eat? I could fix you something. Tuna sandwich? Can of soup? Cereal with banana in it?”

She didn't respond. Just slogged past me into her bedroom and closed the door.

I wondered if this time she was going to do what the doctor told her. The professionals always said the same thing. Take your medication as prescribed. Keep a regular daily routine.

Last fall Dr. Bhuspodi told Dad and me that Mom's chances to live a normal life again were very slim. The doctor said that there was almost nothing anyone could do but help her feel safe and cared for and hope that the meds would keep her calm and oriented. They were developing new and better psychotropic medications every day, and before too long, they would probably find one that would stop the voices without so many side effects. For now, ideally, she should be in a highly structured rehabilitation home, but the best one was ninety miles from here, in Chico, and it was very expensive, with a mile-long waiting list.

When Mom's on a tear, I mean, like, all paranoid, she is energetic and talkative and full of ideas. When she is medicated, she is usually quiet, embarrassed by what she did when she was psychotic. I know how much guts it takes for Mom to make it through the bad days when she is trying to cope. I see what a hard life it is. I love her so much. But I'm starting to hate her, too. Why can't she get it together and be like other moms? I know it's an illness, but I'm fed up with it!

And there's another tough thing. Mental illness often runs in families. I could get it. I could already have it. In my blood. In my body. In my brain.

Sometimes when Mom is gone, locked in the hospital, I go into her bedroom. I stand in front of her dresser and look at myself in the mirror. I'm embarrassed to say that sometimes I've opened the drawers, picked up one of her slips. So silky. I've sorted through her jewelry. I don't know what I'm looking for. Something of her, maybe, that isn't ruined by the madness. I smell her brush for a quick scent of her hair. I handle the figurines she keeps on her bookcase. I feel close to her in a way I can't seem to anymore when she's present.

I am looking for clues. What happened? What happened to the girl who went to high school and twirled a baton and sang in the choir and rode in convertibles? How did this illness claim her so completely?

Mom keeps her pictures in an old-fashioned striped suitcase under her bed. In my favorite snapshot, she is sitting beside my dad on the porch of a house I don't remember. He's wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up way too high, his hair longer and shaggy. He has his arm around her and he slouches in a relaxed way that makes it seem like he has already been there for hours and may not move for several more. She's smiling and leaning into his arm. I have taken that picture and put it in my room, in the top drawer of my own dresser, so I can see it whenever I want to.

The range of pictures astounds me: Mom with girlfriends, Mom with groups at football games, Mom in a line waiting to get on a Ferris wheel. Mom with her hair in rollers, dancing with ten or fifteen girls in some gym. She's not like that anymore.

She spends most of her time in her room. She sleeps a lot. She often sits in her rocker and looks out the window at the backyard. This fall I put up a bird feeder by her window, but she hasn't mentioned it and I don't know if it makes any difference. She has all these books but she hardly ever reads.

I had started my homework but I couldn't concentrate. I thought about getting high and going to bed. Recreation for the Mander family? Get sedated and go to sleep. What a life. There was no one to call except my best friend, Hubie, and he was probably still at his after-school job at the Computer Exchange. I wished I had gotten Marco's number. I wanted to ask him if any kind of reasoning ever convinced his mom to take better care of herself.

I got my basketball and went to the neighborhood park to shoot around. I missed my first ten shots and threw my basketball as hard as I could into the street. A landscape company pickup pulling a trailer filled with lawnmowers hit my ball on the first bounce and knocked it way down the street. It made it to the north-south thoroughfare and was flattened by a city bus.
Happy now?

So I started walking, didn't care where, trying to think my way out of this mess. Without really noticing it, I made it to Hubie's house in time for dinner.

Hubie's mom is a nursing supervisor at our biggest local hospital, but her main role is the neighborhood caretaker. She often has a stray kid at the dinner table.
Hmmm.
She's short and compact, a dynamo. At dinner, she's cooking, bringing more food or more milk, rarely sitting in her chair for more than a minute.

She always, always makes me feel welcome. She asks about my family and listens, but it never feels like prying.

Hubie's dad moves slow, talks slow, and eats slow. He's also short, but unlike his wife, he has a big belly. A book about Emiliano Zapata was at his elbow as he ate.

Hubie has his mom's energy. He was talking nonstop about the idea that communities could begin to provide wireless Internet as part of their infrastructure, like roads and sidewalks. Financed by taxes. He continued talking right through our dessert of vanilla ice cream over white cake with canned peaches.

Where was Z? Was she boycotting family dinners? Hubie's older sister, Kaitlin, would answer only to “Z.” She is the bump in the Ludlow family road. Or, maybe in her case, pothole. When Mr. Ludlow asked her what “Z” stood for, she said, “Hypocrisy.” When he pointed out there was no z in hypocrisy, she said, “Exactly!”

In the almost-perfect Ludlow family, she is the anti-daughter. She's against everything her mother stands for. She shrivels you with a scathing look if you call her a goth. But what is she? Her ears are like chain-link fences, she has a diamond stud in her nose, and I don't know if it stops there. She favors light makeup and dark eye shadow and thrift-store-chic outfits. Punk diva goes Hindu.

Z has beaucoup causes that she constantly champions: alternatives to fossil fuel, preserve our redwoods, conserve water, feed the hungry, medical care for everyone. And a number of things she argues against: bigotry, war, corporate greed, and so on. I have loved her since the day Hubie and I became friends and he invited me home. She was doing her homework in their living room while she danced to something on MTV. I was in fifth grade and she was in middle school. Now, she's a sophomore at Sierra Junior College in town.

Z was a hurdler in high school until something happened between her and the coach. After that, no more organized sports. Today when she walked into the dining room, she had on black tights under a sari thing, with a ratty jean jacket vest over it. Black knit watchcap on top. A thick book tucked under her arm. “You're not a duck,” she said when she saw me. Was that a compliment?

She picked two plums out of the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, took a chicken leg off my plate, and left the room. Hubie's mom rolled her eyes. Mr. Ludlow didn't seem to notice.

Even with the odd moment, it was a comfort to sit and eat with a real family and listen to their conversation and not have to think about anything or do anything. Until afterward, when I bussed the dishes and washed them while Hubie stuck the cleaned ones in the drainer.

“How are things?” he asked, while we were standing together at the sink.

I shook my head. “Not so good,” I said, “and I'm pretty sure they're…” I stopped myself. I didn't need that kind of prophecy.

I went looking for Z before I headed back home. She was in her room with the door closed. I knocked.

“Closed for a reason,” she said.

“Yeah, I figured,” I said through the door. “I just thought I'd say hi before I left.”

I could hear her move across the floor. It sounded like she sat down and leaned against the door on her side. I sat and leaned, too. Now we were back-to-back with the door between. Was this as close as we'd ever be?

“So, WWF, how's things?” she asked.

World Wrestling Federation.
She had come with Hubie to see a couple of my matches last year. In general, she thought wrestling for sport was beyond ridiculous.

“Not so good. Mom blew out at school today. Tackled an office worker. Called her a Lizard.”

“Right at school?”

“Big time.”

“Pretty tough,” she said. “Maybe you should send the office woman a card. Like, uh, ‘Sorry we mistook you for a reptile, get well soon, the Manders.' Smooth things over.”

“Thanks. You're really helpful.”

“Want me to open the door?”

I did. I wanted her to hug me. I wanted to smell that weird oil she puts on and hear the soft jangle of her earrings.

“No,” I said. “Why aren't I a duck?”

“Wittgenstein,” she said. “The book I'm reading. Philosophy. The clarity of language. You're not a duck, are you?”

“No,” I said. Many of my conversations with Z were like this. In the ozone layer. “You okay?”

“Breathing,” she said. “Hey, don't let the setbacks get you down. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe? Thirty-seven. Thousands of kids dying of AIDS every morning. Puts our day-to-day shit in perspective.”

I could hear her getting up.

“Later, Head-in-the-Armpit Boy.”

I should never have invited her to see me wrestle.

Out to Get You

During
the next couple of weeks, I went to school every day, but I couldn't keep my mind on my classes. I kicked myself for not getting Marco's phone number. I would like to have heard how he dealt with his mom's repeated crashes.

A couple of afternoons I went fishing just south of the Cypress Bridge. I worked the flats where some trout were feeding on tiny midges. I caught a couple on those and later, a couple more on yarn salmon eggs. Most of the time, I couldn't tell you what I was thinking about. I was pretty much in another dimension, on automatic pilot, doing what I was told and going wherever I was supposed to be. Other kids kept their distance.

Early on a Tuesday morning, I found out where my mind had been. Hatching a contingency plan.

I was awakened by Mom's keening. I lurched out of bed and found her in the living room, just finishing stuffing red crepe paper all around the edge of the front door. She turned as I came in. She had the red line of lipstick across her forehead and the area from her bottom lip to her chin was solid red.

“Go lock the back door and check the food,” she said, digging in the tote bag at her feet.

I knew she was looking for the red metal Celtic cross.

“Mom—”

“Go,” she said, not looking up. “They're already here, all over outside. See how much food we have. Make a list.”

There was no point in arguing with Mom, paranoid and energized.

I walked into the kitchen, picked up a pad and pencil from the table near the phone, and started:
milk, bacon, lettuce,
just a one-word kind of list. I made a quick inventory of the fridge and pantry, went back into the living room, and handed it to Mom. She was busy tying red ribbons on all the lamps.

The Lizard People were back.

Time for my plan. I grabbed the phone out of the hall and took it to my room.

The woman who answered Dad's cell phone didn't know where he was. She said maybe he was working out of town. And then she started crying. She said he left one night about two weeks ago and she hadn't seen him since.

“You're his son, right?”

“Yeah.”

“If you see him,” she said, “ask him to give Charlene, me, a call. I need some help with the rent and we can still be friends. Tell him that. Okay?”

“Did he take any clothes? Or his laptop or anything?”

“No. Not even this phone. We were arguing. He just walked out. Well, his computer was probably still in his car.” She coughed. “Hey, you tell him I'm sorry for my part in it. Okay?” she said, sniffling.

“Any idea where he might have gone?” I was picturing what Dad's car looked like.

“Huh-uh. I called the places we go out to. They say they haven't seen him. I called his office, and they say he hasn't been back to work. I even called the police and hospitals this week. I thought maybe something happened to him. They never heard of him.”

From the way she pronounced her words, it sounded to me like maybe she had been drinking. Was Charlene such a big improvement over Mom? What is it with Dad?

“I told him he ought to stop taking all that Vicodin, and six-packs on top of it,” she said. “I told him it made him like a zombie. He's just out there sulking. A motel or something. I don't see how he could be driving very far, the way he gets.”

Dad. The stable one in our family. Yeah, he used a lot of pills for his back pain, and he always had a beer going at home, but he didn't get comatose and he didn't get mean. He just got slowed down. And he could come out of it okay if Mom went on a tear.