by Carroll Ann Susco
“You should listen to the rain,” she said, the pane a smear of shapes and color.
“What does that have to do with it?” He asked.
She looked out the window at the spatters hitting the glass. “Maybe everything.”
“Look, just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. And that was the truth. The edifice she had built her life around had come down.
“You don’t know? Friggin A.” He hit his thighs with his fists. Tiny fists compared to his anger. He looked at his fists. They weren’t tiny. They just felt really small. He said, “I need you to come back to me.”
She looked over her shoulder then and into his eyes, examined his hair. “We have to prepare for the advent,” she said.
“That again, really?” He said. He was not interested in religion. He thought it ruined things.
“Really,” she said, but honestly, she wasn’t sure what to believe. It just seemed safe to think that.
“But you don’t even go to church. Are you taking your meds?” He asked.
She jerked away from the window and looked at him. “You don’t take me seriously,” she said.
“We’ve been down this road before,” he said, putting his fingers to the bridge of his nose and tightening.
“I lost faith. You lost faith in me,” she said. She looked back out the window and remembered being inside the hospital, watching the rain on the hermetically sealed windows. They wouldn’t let her out until she lost her faith, until she called them delusions, and settled in on a medication regimen. She remembered he had come to see her. He smelled of the outside air, fresh, and like soap. She wanted to go with him then. She didn’t anymore. The cost had been too high.
“I can’t live this way,” she said.
“Don’t say that,” he said. He wanted to hug her but couldn’t. So he sat holding the bridge of his nose.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You said it again,” he said and grinned. He gripped the chair arms instead of bolting toward her.
His joke made her smile. She moved from window to couch, sat back, releasing something. But she knew she had lost his trust, would never get it back, and most of society’s. She sighed. She wanted to get her purse and keys and go but where? It was all more of this. So she stayed where she was and swallowed the fact that the person she was trying to leave was herself.
She hiked through the woods to the beach at Calvert Cliffs to hunt for fossils, with mosquitoes and biting flies making her arms and legs itch, sting and swell. She was sweating in the 90-degree heat, while carrying a bottle of water, a pail and a pick. She washed her legs in the water to cool off, bent where the small waves broke and crouched down, scooping the rocks with her hand. She dug all afternoon for her treasure, but too many people came there, and her treasure was elusive. She did eventually find a few shark teeth and some kind of worm imprint. She dug with intention as if she could find the truth in the past long gone. As if she didn’t know it. Hers anyway.
“Ever look at yourself in the mirror?” she asked him as she rinsed her teeth with mouthwash.
“No,” he said, “Come to bed.”
“I look completely different than what I thought,” she said. She had thought she was more than the frame implied.
“You look fine,” he said, placating.
“Do I?” she asked, trying to believe him.
“Come to bed,” he said, his voice comforting. She left the woman in the bathroom mirror, the fine lines, the not-as-pretty, not-as-young, not-as-perky, half sane and shuffled toward the warm covers. The warm body waiting for her. But not tonight. The mirror gave her a headache. She thought she knew herself. She didn’t. How to trust herself? She couldn’t. He turned out the light. They spooned.
In the old part of town was an old church with stained glass windows down the aisle, in the nave, transept and the sanctuary. What did she think she would find there? She was looking for something specific, a sign, a priest to invite her into the confessional or join her as she sat on the old wood pew. But she was alone, it seemed, except for a few tourists after she sat there an hour. On the bus home, she repented going, for demanding a reckoning.
She told herself she was on vacation, not too sick to work. She cleaned, she gardened, she made dinner. But one day was different. She had to leave the house, something propelling her out so that she could barely collect her things as she flew, locked the door, and ran for the bus. She went to Dupont Circle, to her favorite bookstore where she rummaged through the piles. Overwhelmed, she left with nothing. The store on the corner had a sign in the window for Marlboros. She had quit but went inside and bought a soda, a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. She went to the park in the middle of the circle and sat on a bench. The pigeons swirled, the traffic fought its way around her, and the homeless people slept here and there on grates, boxes, and Army-issued blankets. She lit up. Someone said, “Hey can I have one of those?” She looked to her side where the voice had come from and saw a man with a shopping cart full of dirty things, his clothes dirty, his face, his hair. He was missing several teeth. She was not scared of him. Was she supposed to be? Maybe he should be scared of her now with her new diagnosis. They were, according to society, the same—the crazy. She held out a cigarette and the lighter. He came closer, took it without touching her and lit up. “Oh, that’s good. Thank you, ma’am.” She smiled. He looked at the bench. “May I?” She nodded. He sat and looked out at the traffic, at the pigeons, at the people walking by. And there they all were, the successful like skin, keeping the parts together, and the mentally ill, like veins in a body, unseen, uncontrolled, living their lives in ways she knew most people would not be able to trace, necessary. Necessary? Really? She wondered. She thought, I need a book on art, religion, philosophy and psychosis. She could move forward then, took her last drag and got up, stepped on the butt to put it out.
He took a long slow draw and blew it out. “Don’t that beat all. That was like rain on a hot day,” he said.
“Cigarettes are bad for you,” she said, looking at her butt.
“Nothing can kill me, or it would have.” He grinned.
“Keep telling yourself that,” she said. She handed him a 20 and went back to Kramer Books where she bought On Good and Evil, Touched with Fire, and a Bible. It was still hard to read, but books had always been so comforting. She carried her books close to her chest and walked to the bus stop.
The homeless man’s words would be repeated later, over dinner with her husband. “Don’t that beat all?” She said. And it did. It beat all of it somehow. Something was very different, her need to examine, her ability to accept, let go, move forward. She was lowering her expectations and letting go of the need to fit in like a cool pair of shoes. She was chewing on being necessary.
As she brushed her teeth, she could only steal a glance to see what she really looked like. She should have given the man the pack and the lighter, but she was already hooked.
She quit, again, all at once, standing in the woods behind her house in her raincoat, hood up, made small by trees. That was where she found her faith, pressing her palm on a wet oak, looking up at the branches, the leaves, the clouds, the drops falling. She opened her mouth and took it in. This, a testament to God, who was larger than she could imagine and who made nature, which was right then more beautifully put together than she could stand without smiling. She was still crazy. She was still another psychotic artist and philosopher, but in that moment of touching the oak, she knew she would be okay.
***
Carroll Ann Susco has a chapbook, Bean Spiller, on her mental illness at Variant Literature Press. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh and over 40 publications, including three in The Sun Magazine. See her LinkedIn page for a list and links.
Bean Spiller, Variantlit.com
Love Attempts, https://books2read.com/u/bWYLDx
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