4

“Are you comfortable now, Abby?” the psychiatric nurse had asked her, as I was to learn later, along with the rest of the story which I now offer with acceptable narrative liberties. Abby had insisted her name was Ava at the time of her emergency medical admission. What self-assurance!

“Good,” the nurse said, surmising that she was very comfortable. By this time the medicine had finally reached therapeutic levels. She closed Abby’s strong door, expecting her patient not to alter her week-long routine—napping with the help of the medicine until her afternoon session with the psychiatrist.

“This world sucks,” Abby would always start.

“‘Life is hard and then you die,’ is a bumper sticker I’ve seen on cars,” Dr. Landry responded. “I’m there for all of those people who are in between.” He paused for a moment and then continued when she hadn’t continued herself. “Psychiatry has made considerable progress in finding out what’s wrong. It just hasn’t done much to fix it.”

“That’s why the drugs?” she asked him.

“That’s why the drugs,” he responded. And then there was another pause which seemed more uncomfortable for him than for her. “I’d surely like to get to first base here,” he continued again, “and find out what’s wrong. Won’t you help me?”

“No,” she responded. “You can’t help yourselves, much less me. I’m the one who’s normal; your world is the thing that’s crazy. I can’t cope with your crazy world, so I’m the one who gets drugged. You, on the other hand, accept this madness in your world, and you’re the one who’s rational. Is that what sane is?” she asked. “Just acceptance? Submission? Resignation?”

“And your world?” he asked her right back, eyes unblinking through his black-framed, thick-lens glasses.

“In my world your eyes would probably be twenty-twenty.”

He then removed his glasses to make her feel more at ease.

“Oh, put ’em back on,” she scoffed. “My world has the crime rate of the moon. Children only disappear when it’s time for a bath. Terrorism happens only in Edgar Allen Poe books and used car lots. The last serial killer was Herod, for Christ’s sake!”

“And Christ? Did he die on a cross in your world?”

“Damn you,” she seethed, without a reasonable rebuttal.

The nurse, meanwhile, in another part of the hospital, had briefed the on-coming nurse with an on-service summary:

“This twenty-one year old white female was brought here by her aunt with whom she lived. The admitting chief complaint was, ‘She just can’t cope.’ The aunt had never been close to her as the patient had resided with her only temporarily until she was to find her own accommodations. The aunt stated that she was the only relative the patient had who still lived in New Orleans. She further stated that the patient was completely untroubled—normal—until a week ago when she returned home after an all-night date completely dissatisfied with the world. She watched television news, continuously applauding the efforts of ecology groups, anti-drug campaigns, SPCA’s, and so on. At the same time, she expressed frustration that these groups even had to exist. She alternately cheered and cried, but the crying was always the longer. The aunt quoted her as saying, ‘This world’s for the birds—I’ve got to get out,’ which she interpreted as suicidal rhetoric, called her family doctor, and took her here at his direction. Dr. Landry had agreed she posed a threat to herself and the diagnosis was depression with suicidal precautions instituted.

“During the course of her admission, it has become apparent that she in fact has had no thought-out scheme for committing suicide but expressed the delusion that she could just travel back to her world where there weren’t these awful problems. She has been improving on anti-depressants.”

Ultimately, all of this became known to me, of course, when I became involved again with Ava/Abby.

“Abby” indeed had improved in attitude. She steadfastly had refused to accept the world and her new name in it, but did learn to cope. And coping seemed the consummate parameter of sanity here. She never had talked of sliding to Dr. Landry, but he had learned enough to know that someone named Ralph had single-handedly distorted her world from a thing of beauty to a viper pit. Technically, I suppose, he was right. He just couldn’t realize the true circumstances but instead had surmised that this Ralph character had some cult leader-type effect on her. He used the word Svengali.

After a period of time, when she was no longer considered a threat to herself, she was allowed a discharge. Into my care, I might add. Boy, that really irked the shrink. You should’ve seen the stink-eye I got from the guy. But she was oriented, not a threat, and legally free. Her aunt, a real timid type, refused to accept her at home.

And so Abby/Ava asked for me. It was a phone call I half-expected.

“Take me back, Ralph,” she asked when I went to pick her up with her own car. She wasn’t angry, probably thanks to the anti-depressants. She was acting sort of like I had broken her Grandma’s antique heirloom vase or something: Everything would be O.K. if she could just get the pieces glued back together again.

At first there was a cool distance. We began by planning to spend the next couple of weeks living together in my apartment. She needed some place to land, and I would do. We went to her aunt’s house for a lot of her clothes, during which time she had been warned to watch out for me. She was wise to have me wait for her outside.

“Remember Charles Manson,” she had been warned.

“Who’s that?” she asked me as she began sorting out her clothes on my sofa. It was an overcast New Orleans afternoon, so I flipped on the ceiling lights for her to see better. There was a lot of clanging involved since she had brought her clothes over on their hangers.

“Manson, Manson...I don’t know,” I responded. “I’ve heard the name. Can’t be good. I think he killed someone.”

“I’m sure he must have,” she quipped back. “So did this guy Jim Jones, I guess,” she continued. “That’s the other guy my aunt said you might be like. You did change my world, you know.” She paused, musing. “Jimmy Jones—such a happy little name.”

“Ava,” I said.

“Please, call me Abby,” she announced. She gazed at me with assurance, and her tone was one of direction, purpose, in her life.

“You’ve landed here, then, after all?” I asked her, sharing condolences for her former name.

“When in Reme...” she surrendered.

“Actually, Rome,” I corrected. The six hills of Rome were now seven, named after the other suckler of the wolf, and home of, now, the Roman Catholic Church.

“O.K. I was just going to say, ‘When in Reme, get reamed out as the Remans do.’ Of course the new name ruins my pun.”

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“Call me Rocky.” She laughed, and this was good to see.

“Rocky. That’s great.”

As I said, it was good to see some genuine good humor on her face again, for this gentle face from a gentler world had been nothing but a troubled face in this troubled world.

“Well, Rocky, what do we do now?” Having accomplished nothing, she let the clothes and hangers fall back unsorted on the sofa. After having hauled them all up to my apartment, we were ready for a break.

We sat down at the dinette table, discolored more than I’d ever noticed, and I poured coffee cups for both of us from the pot I had carried over from the kitchen counter. Under the top of the table were drawers. Instinctively I opened the one by me, the one over my lap, and I retrieved the ash tray, matches, and cigarette pack. I pounded the cigarette pack against the palm of one hand to extrude a cigarette. I pulled it out, put it into my mouth, and fingered a second one to offer Abby.

“Cigarette?” I suggested.

“Yes, thanks,” she answered as if this were just what she needed. She reached her hand across the small, square, ugly table, and had hardly had a pincer grasp of the offering when suddenly she dropped it along with her jaw. But my cigarette hit the table before hers.

“We don’t smoke!” we exclaimed simultaneously.

“This is quite disturbing,” she said to me, newly rattled. “I thought you said the only thing that changes is our names.”

“Yes, because names are how the world, old or new, perceives us and—”

“No, I mean, now we smoke.”

“Or have always in this world,” I added.

“Rocky, we have changed. We’re smokers.”

“Not anymore. I just quit.” I grinned, but saw her disapproval, as my attitude was a little too flippant for her.

“Listen, I’m just about ready to cope and a new twist hits. You’re not helping.”

“What can I do?” I asked. “I guess I’ve just been kind of numbed by the changes. I’ll tell you one thing, though—I sure would like a cigarette.” I reached for one again.

“Light that thing up and I’ll slap your face off,” she warned. And I thought of Ana on a Pensacola beach. If she had been holding back that time, I would be a dead man this time.

“O.K., O.K.” And for the first real time in my life I quit smoking, even if I quit before I had even started. “You realize, of course,” I said, “that now we’re going to gain weight.” She punched me in the shoulder.

Smoking, drugs, and obsessive eating: my forbidden indulgences. I had outlawed them a long time ago as a safeguard, because I’m the type who’s always given in to what I’ve wanted. Always. That’s me. But there always had to be limits, too. I’ve cautioned myself never to breach my limits by picking up addictive behavior, like smoking or gluttony. This was because I knew, being the type of self-gratifying guy that I was, that I’d be a sucker for nicotine to the same horrible end like my mother. Or I’d over-eat without restraint, another addictive behavior that would do me in. I knew that deep down inside me was a big fat guy who would gladly cast me aside on his way out. Hell, he’d kill me to get out.

Alcohol, on the other hand, I could always handle. Abby spoke again, accusingly.

“Wearing ugly clothes in a terrible world, with a psychiatric record, and now fat, too, because I just quit smoking when I didn’t even smoke. Thanks, Rock, you’ve changed my life.”

“Rocky,” I corrected her. She punched me in the same shoulder again. So I disjointed it. That’s one of the things I can do—a most dreadful sight. I moaned invitingly for her sympathy, but she knew I was able to do this and just told me to stop it.

“When’s your appointment for the CT scan?” I asked as I slipped the ball back into its socket.

“Forget it,” she snapped. “Forget the CT scan.”

“Aw, c’mon, you’ve got to do it or they’re going to come looking for you.”

“Why? I don’t have a brain tumor. I’ve got you instead.”

“They don’t know that. Humor them. Just do it, have it come out as normal, act complacent, and then they’ll discharge you from their care altogether.”

“I...don’t...want...to go into a big machine,” she said emphatically. “And Dr. Landry said it was just a good idea. And psychiatrists never have good ideas. Just their patients do. And they get drugged.”

“Well, it’s a better idea than shock therapy. So let’s do this ‘good idea.’”

“My appointment with him is tomorrow; I’ll try to wiggle out of that stupid scan by acting so disgustingly complacent that I’ll suggest this Manson guy should be rehabilitated. And if he does let me out of it, that’s O.K. with you?”

“Sure. I just want us to go our own merry way without interference.”

“Our merry way...”

“Well, whatever way, I’d like to put us back—I don’t know how. But I surely can’t press on with the “locals” of this society after us in all of the bad ways of this bad world or in even worse ways of worse worlds.”

“There aren’t going to be worse worlds, are there?” she reminded me.

“Of course not.” And the subject dropped, along with our shoes, which foretold that even at this early afternoon hour we were settling in for the evening.

It was surprising that during our first night back together there arose the first inkling that we wanted to re-engage in the trail-blazing venture known as sex. It turned out to be her idea and I was glad for that, for I didn’t dare be the aggressor. When it was time for bed, she chose the bedroom with the oak furniture, as the colorfest meant bad memories. It was clear that I was invited. We both needed it, so we snuggled together, feeling for each other both emotionally as well as physically. It was a time of gentle caresses. We lay on the bed fully clothed, holding each other for dear life.

“How do we do it without sliding?” she whispered. She felt so good. It was a dream re-dreamed come true.

“I’m the one who slid. You just hooked on...oh, I didn’t mean for that to sound nasty.”

“I didn’t take that the wrong way,” she said softly.

“I just won’t slide,” I continued. “I’ll just enjoy it for the unidimensional experience that it is.”

“Do you think you can live with the disappointment?” she asked, and it took me a split second before I guessed she hadn’t really taken that the wrong way either.

“I’m teasing,” she said, so that I could be certain.

“We’re O.K.,” I said, referring back to the dangers of risking sex again, “unless you’ve learned to slide, too.”

“No,” she answered, holding me more tightly, intertwining her legs with mine.

It was a pretty safe deal, but to take absolutely no chance at all meant no sex at all, and at this point abstinence was out of the question, as I wasn’t thinking with my brain.

No walls changed colors. Even in this unhappy world there was some happiness that night, I thought. And that just about made it alright about this place.