is something strictly between us,” she said. For a moment I thought she was going to give me that sly grin of hers. But no, her lips were pressed tight, her eyes squinting mean thoughts at me. She put down her knife and fork, lining them up alongside each other on the edge of the plate. She stood up, smoothed down the back of her pretty dress, and said, “Excuse me,” to my mother. “I need to make a call.” To me she said nothing.
Then, it was just Mother and me. Like in the old days. And like other rough times, it looked as if we were about to have A Talk. She took her chair and pulled it around the table to sit beside me. She dipped a napkin into a water glass, lifted my hand off the plate, and wiped it clean. I started to put my other hand down on the mass of holiday victuals, but she gripped it by the wrist and bent it back until I cried out. She pushed the plate beyond my reach.
“I think I should go back,” I said.
“Are you happier there than at home?”
“They eat what I do.”
“All the residents are vegetarian?” She was not taking me seriously.
“They range from macrovegan to fishoterian. I fit right in the middle.”
“After all these years.” She started to weep. “Back and forth, back and forth.”
“Not always my idea.”
“We never should have sent you away in the first place,” she sniffed.
“Terrible things could’ve happened, Mom.” I gave her a little jab on the shoulder. “I have considered castrating Tedious, assaulting Iris.”
I didn’t qualify for the Clean Plate Club that year. An hour from the time I sat down at the table, the mountain of sliced bird and mashed tubers sat lumpily before me under a translucent sheath of congealing gravy. Mother gave up and left, stifling a sob. Brother Tedious returned and picked up around me, gathering silverware, the big platter with the dismembered bird, the sloshing gravy boat. I remained alone, knowing I wouldn’t eat any more but afraid to cross the living room, where I knew I would have to face my destiny, again.
Finally, unwilling to consider the lifeless remnants of my friend the turkey any longer, I rose from the table and edged out of the dining room, hugging the wall along the stairs to my room. I kept my head from turning, even though out of the corner of my eye I could see Albert, Ted, Iris, and Mother all sitting next to each other on the blue couch. They appeared primed for intervention.
“Come here, kid,” Albert said softly. “We need to have a talk.”
Well, it just about cracked me up to hear him call me over so tenderly, so sadly, knowing I had let him down in the worst way.
“Now?” I hoped he would say, No, not now, not this minute, a little later maybe. “Yes, now,” he said. “But it can wait while you change out of that getup.”
“I’ll be right back.” I gathered the skirt hem in one fist and, hanging on to the banister for balance with the other hand, continued up the stairs two steps at a time.
I went straight into my parents’ bedroom and rummaged through their closet. I pulled out, hastily, a pair of Albert’s plaid golf pants (very St. Paul, ca. 1978), a gray silk shirt with French cuffs, a doublebreasted blazer with a nautical insignia. The ensemble really came together with a wide tie of petunias on steroids. The dresser mirror told me that the getup still needed work. But give me an A for effort.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Albert said when I entered the living room to face the tribunal.
“I am my cousin’s cousin,” I answered. “And my brother’s sibling,” I added, meeting my mom’s tear-filled eyes. “My mother’s daughter and my father’s son. I am part of this family.”
Chapter Three
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
