Running with Scissors (26 page)

I sat at the far end of the counter and watched. When Winnie came to take my order she said, “What’s a little man like you sitting here all by your lonesome?”

“I’m with them,” I said, nodding toward the far end of the counter.

“Oh,” she said. Then she leaned in. “What’s the matter, sourpuss, you don’t like your momma’s new friend?”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s her shrink.”

Winnie opened her mouth. “Her shrink? Your momma’s gone and shacked up with her shrink? Boy, she must be one crazy lady.”

“They’re not shacked up. My mother’s crazy and he’s taking care of her.”

“Your momma’s crazy?” Winnie said, sliding her eyes sideways.

My mother was talking to her spoon.

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s out of it. Her doctor took her to that motel across the street to try and get her better.”

Winnie frowned. “That don’t make no sense. Why would a shrink take his crazy patient to a motel?”

“Well,” I said, “he’s sort of an unusual shrink.”

“Unusual my ass,” Winnie said. “Somethin’s fishy. I better go have me a look.” And she walked back down to the other end of the counter.

I watched as Winnie approached my mother and Finch, smiling. Then she reached across the counter, put her hand on the doctor’s shoulder and said something that caused him to laugh and blush. She pointed to the rest rooms at the far end of the room. Finch got up from the counter and walked back to the bathroom. Then Winnie came around from behind the counter and took the stool next to my mother. She turned sideways so they were face to face, and they had a chat. A moment later when the doctor reappeared, Winnie got up, went back behind the counter and came walking back to me.

“Sugar, somethin’ funny’s goin’ on,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “My mother’s stark raving road.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, sugar. I got an instinct about this one.” She leaned forward and whispered. “I seen a lot of crazy people come in here. Folks madder than hatters. But your momma’s different. She says that doctor of hers, he’s trying to get him a little action, if you know what I mean.” She gave me a knowing wink.

“Don’t listen to her,” I said. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. This morning she said her dead grandfather was standing next to her holding out a basket of pecans.”

“I love pecans,” Winnie said. Then, “Hey, we got us some pretty good pecan pie. Would you like a slice?” She added, “On the house.”

“No, thanks.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it’s good pie. Not too sweet.”

“I don’t like pie,” I told her. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

Her face fell. “You don’t have much of a sweet tooth? Everybody has a sweet tooth, sugar.”

“Not me.”

“Well, you must got other things on your mind.”

I glanced over at my mother and Finch and saw that he was gripping her arm, firmly. Great. Now she was gonna have a fit in public, right here in the restaurant.

“I told your momma I’ll come and visit her later at the motel.”

“You did?”

“I did. Your momma could use a friend,” Winnie said. “That shrink of hers.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. He may be a shrink, but he’s still a man.”

I could not imagine what my mother said to get this perfect stranger to visit her in her motel room. I could not imagine the kind of person that would, upon seeing a crazy talcum-powder-covered Southern lady think to herself,
Hmmmm, she might make a great new friend
. The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

That evening, Winnie came to the motel. She came wearing white denim jeans with rhinestone roses on the back pockets. She wore a red-and-white checkered shirt that she had knotted just below her large breasts.

Finch was lying on top of my mother on the bed, struggling to pin her arms against the mattress. I was standing by the TV wishing my mother would stop thrashing. When I heard the knock, I was sure it was the motel manager, coming to throw us out. Instead, it was Winnie.

“What the hell is going on in this room,” she demanded.

Finch turned and my mother slipped out from under him.

Winnie ran to my mother’s side. “You ain’t like no doctor I ever seen before. You’re the one that looks crazy.”

My mother was panting. “He is, Winnie. He’s the crazy one.”

Winnie turned to my mother. “We’ve got to get you all cleaned up, sugar. What’s that man gone and done to you?”

My mother began to sob.

Winnie turned to me. “Sweetums, you go and get yourself a Coke from the vending machine. You got quarters? Reach in my bag over there and pull out my wallet. I got some change in there.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“Well, alright then. But scram.”

Then Winnie eyed Finch, who was standing at the foot of the bed, utterly bewildered. “And you,” she said, hugging my mother tight, “you take those hands of yours and leave us alone.”

Finch cleared his throat. “Look, Miss,” Finch said. “You do not understand this situation. This woman is in a state of crisis and she needs—”

Winnie released my mother and walked over to Finch. In her high-heeled red boots she was at least four inches taller than he. She lowered her voice and looked him straight in the eyes. “You notice all those rigs in the parkin’ lot?” she said. “Those are my boys. I know every one of ’em. There’s Fred from Alabama, he’s up here makin’ a peanut delivery. And Stew? He’s out here all the way from Nevada. Now,” she said, placing her hand on her hip, “I don’t think my boys would take too kindly if I was to tell ’em that some shrink was in this here motel room holding a lady in crisis down on the bed like I seen when I walked in. As a matter a fact, I think that just might ruffle their feathers. Now you go on and you leave us ladies alone.”

Finch said nothing. He simply turned and walked out of the room.

Winnie went back over to my mother and cupped her face in her hands. “It’s okay,” she said. “Winnie’s here.”

The door did not open again for three days, except to receive deliveries from a few of Winnie’s friends.

When my mother finally exited that motel room, she was transformed.

“Oh my God,” Hope said when she finally saw her.

“Deirdre?” Bookman asked.

I didn’t recognize her myself.

My mother was wearing one of Winnie’s colorful Hawaiian muumuus. Winnie had also treated her to a makeover, painting her face so heavily she looked like a former Vegas lap dancer. Her eyelids were like two cabochons of turquoise and when she blinked, her new plastic eyelashes touched her brow.

My mother loved her new look and her new friend.

I scrutinized Winnie for visible signs of mental illness. I wondered if my mother had somehow captured her mind, made her crazy, too.

“There we are,” Winnie said, presenting my new mother. “She just needed a little talking to and a little makeover. A lady’s got to feel like a lady.”

“Shall we go?” my mother said.

Nobody said a word.

“Winnie’s coming with us,” my mother said. “She’s decided to take a leave of absence from her job. To make sure I get back on my feet.”

Winnie smiled and fluttered her polyester eyelashes.

All the way home in the car, I stared at my mother’s new face. Every few miles she would comment, “What a lovely tree,” or “That is a beautiful lawn.” To the untrained eye, my mother might have appeared to be normal. But I knew better. I could see the wildness behind the eyes, crouching, hiding. I could see the tiny hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth that said,
I’ll fool you all
.

I flopped my head against Bookman’s shoulder and he moved his hand carefully to my crotch, checking the rearview mirror to make sure that Hope wasn’t watching.

He tried jerking me off through my jeans, but I couldn’t get hard.

THIN AIR

O

NE NIGHT NOT LONG AFTER MY FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY
while I was lying on my bed writing in my journal about how much I hoped to someday meet Brooke Shields, there was a knock at the door. I knew it was Bookman. Nobody else would knock on my door at two in the morning; they would just waltz right in. I wasn’t about to give him a blowjob, that much I knew.

I opened the door. “What?” I was angry with him for being distant recently. Everybody had noticed it—my mother, Dorothy, Natalie, Hope. Everybody was mad at him for withdrawing.

“I’m going out for some film,” he said.

I thought it was odd that he would tell me this. And why did he need film at two in the morning? “Okay,” I said. “See you later then.”

For a beat, he looked at me with an expression of sadness so complete, I mistook it for calm.

He turned and walked down the hall and I went back to my bed and continued writing. I wrote about how I imagined Brooke and I would be excellent friends because I truly thought she was a gifted actor, though I didn’t believe she’d yet had the right role, with the exception of
Pretty Baby
.

A
few hours later I went upstairs to his room looking for him. He wasn’t there.

I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.

I immediately went into the kitchen, grabbed the phone book and looked up the number for Amtrak. It only took a five-minute call to discover that a one-way ticket to New York City from Springfield, Massachusetts, had been purchased in the name of Neil Bookman.

I ran straight to Hope’s room and pounded on the door. “Bookman ran away,” I shouted. “Hope, wake up, Bookman’s gone.”

The door flew open. “What? What’s going on?”

I told her what had happened, then about my hunch and how I called Amtrak and it turned out he was on that train.

If there was one thing I could count on from Hope it was that she never minimized.

“This is not good,” she said. “I’ll go wake Dad.”

I ran back into the kitchen and paced frantically around the table. I grabbed a dried, raw hot dog off the counter and drummed it against my chest. “What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?” I was like an autistic sitting against a wall.

A moment later, Hope reappeared. “Dad said to call Amtrak and see if they can stop the train.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got the number right here.”

“Wait,” Hope said, pausing my arm. “How do we get them to stop the train, what do we say?”

“Okay, lemme think, lemme think,” I said. “Let’s tell them that—here.” I handed her the phone. “Say you’re his psychiatrist’s daughter, that he’s run away from treatment and that he has a bomb.”

“That’s smart,” she said and dialed the number.

But it was too late. The train had already arrived in Manhattan.

An hour later, Hope and I were in the Buick, on our way to New York. We’d thrown a change of clothes into a paper bag, taken all the money out of her father’s wallet and filled the car with gas. “Jesus, Hope, why is he doing this?”

“Because, Augusten,” she said, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s been very angry with Dad lately. Dad’s been worried about him.” She glanced at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s true. Dad’s been worried.”

I thought back to one night last week. Bookman and I were lying upstairs on the floor in his room, side by side. He was telling me that it had all become too much. “What?” I had asked.

“You, your mother, Hope, and especially Doctor.” He spoke slowly, his teeth clenched, eyes focused straight up at the ceiling. When I pressed him for more he said, “I’m afraid I’ll end up killing myself or Finch or you or all of us.” At the time it had given me shivers, a clammy feeling that ran throughout my body. But then I talked myself out of it, saying he was only being dramatic because he wanted attention. I thought it was another ploy to make me admit that I was still madly in love with him.

“What if we can’t find him?” I said to Hope.

“We’ll find him, Augusten. Don’t you worry.”

I had reason to believe her. When I was eleven and still living in Leverett my dog ran away from home. It was Hope who showed up at my house with five hundred fliers that read
LOST DOG
. And it was Hope who drove me around Leverett all night long sticking the fliers in mailboxes. My father had called it a “tremendous waste of time and energy” but the next day I got a phone call and my dog was returned.

“We’ve got to find him, Hope,” I said.

We arrived in New York City five hours later and Hope drove straight to Greenwich Village. “It’s the gay section of the city. It’s where he’d most likely go.” We parked in a twenty-four-hour garage and set about on foot.

The problem was, there were too many bars. We’d never be able to hit them all. My eyes burned from exhaustion; it was as if I could feel the blood vessels in them vibrating. I didn’t know what to do.

But Hope did. “We’ll take his picture and show it to the bartenders, see if any of them have seen him.”

One by one, we hit the gay bars of New York. And one by one, the bartenders shook their heads. “Are you sure?” Hope asked every time.

When it became clear to us that we would never find him by going door-to-door, we decided our best bet was to go back to Northampton and wait by the phone. Eventually, he’d call. And if we were there, we’d have a better chance of talking him home than anyone else who answered the phone.

We drove straight back to Northampton, stopping once for gas but not for food.

And for the next three nights, I did not sleep. I stayed awake, sitting in a chair beneath the phone in the kitchen.

Hope called his parents, who hadn’t heard from him in years. She called his former roommate, who said she hadn’t heard from him since he moved out. And that, as far as Bookman’s social life was concerned, was the end of the line.

I waited by the phone for a week. Then a month. Then two months. Then a year.

At night, I dreamed he returned and I would ask him, “Where did you go?” and “Why?”

After a year, the few belongings in his room were packed into boxes and placed in the upstairs hall closet.