Crazy by John Bruce
Steve Fuller, oppressed by his parents and keen to distance himself from his disreputable past, moves near his religiously inclined friend Fred Dickson, and meets an intriguing young woman that confounds his expectations.
Steve Fuller got home from work a little early, and as he got off the elevator on his floor of the apartment building, he saw his mother, pushing an envelope under his door. Clearly, she hadn't meant to have him run into her that way. She only lived ten or fifteen minutes away, but if something was urgent, she would call, and if it wasn't, there was no reason she couldn't put a stamp on the envelope and mail it.
"I'm sorry," she said, pushing past him in the hall.
"What...?" he asked.
"I just wanted to say," she said, "you look very unhappy. Very unhappy." And she opened the door to the stairwell and scurried down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator. Steve could think of one reason why he might look unhappy, and that would be if, returning home from work, he found his mother shoving a note under his apartment door.
When he got inside his place, he picked up the envelope and opened it. It was in his mother's compulsively neat handwriting. "Dear Steve," it read:
It went on in this vein. In fact, the letter was three pages long.
Steve had been living, without thinking the matter all the way through, in fairly close emotional as well as geographic proximity to his parents ever since he'd gotten out of college. This was partly from a desire to make up for a period of underachievement, hard drinking, and drug abuse that lasted throughout his adolescence. In fact, it culminated in a disciplinary hearing for an episode the exposition of which astonished even the dean in its length and complexity, and which resulted, in the quaint word of the institution, in Steve's separation from it. This in turn required a scramble on his parents' part to find him a place in a school that was, if such a thing could be possible, less prestigious than the first.
At some point during this latter part of his education, Steve had, however dimly, come to perceive a certain light, and part of that was an urge to be more filial, though as time went on, he began to recognize that the forces that had driven him to his earlier prodigality were not exclusively internal. His parents had always been free with heavy-handed and intrusive advice, and it was only as the years progressed that this tendency began to resolve itself into something other than the usual conflicts between parents and their growing children.
It was that afternoon's particular business in the hallway and the note shoved under his door that made it finally clear to him that his mother was taking unwarranted advantage of circumstances as they had evolved. In fact, he reflected, you didn't need to be Freud to think that his mother's influence had borne some responsibility for the long dry spell he'd had with women. His best bet would be to move farther away, though since he liked his job and didn't want to leave it, he'd have to stay in the same general area. It wouldn't hurt to move into a security building and have his new phone unlisted, though.
As he thought about where he might move, he realized that he had an easy choice, and this was related to the gradual reconciliation, at least in lifestyle, that he'd made with his parents. A couple of years earlier, he'd begun to attend church with them, though not for their reasons. They felt that All Saints' Episcopal Church was a bastion of respectability - and indeed it was. Steve was more inclined to take his visits there as something experimental, a furtherance of small brushes with the numinous that he'd had during his own less respectable years.
During his visits there, he'd gotten to know Fred Dickson, who in fact had turned up at All Saints' at just about the same time Steve had, but under different circumstances: Fred was a newly minted deacon, which among the Episcopalians is the first level of ordained clergy. And Fred was the sort of young clergyman that any denomination would be proud to get: he was tall, broad-shouldered, with a straight nose, firm lips, a dimpled chin, and a full head of curly brown hair. His teeth, square and regular, flashed white in ready smiles. His only flaw was a slight cross-eyedness, but he cured that by keeping his glasses on, and mostly nobody noticed it.
Right after he arrived at All Saints', Fred met Jean Turnbull, who was by far the most eligible of the young women in the parish, both good looking and of a highly respectable family. Steve, in fact, would have liked to have dated her himself, but a certain lack of respectability continued to hang about him, and he knew he didn't have a chance. A handsome, athletic member of the clergy was the kind of suitor who was almost predestined for someone like Jean - a corporate lawyer or an investment banker, after all, would be too bound up with commerce. They announced their engagement in the most respectable way anyone could: Fred published the banns himself, from the pulpit.
At first, Steve envied Fred his social and romantic success, but soon enough it became apparent that Fred hadn't entered into a life of unmitigated felicity. There had been an embarrassingly public discussion at a church social event, in which Jean accused Fred of a certain obtuseness for not having understood, prior to their engagement, that at Jean's social level it was expected that husband and wife occupied separate bedrooms. This was made no easier for listeners to bear by Fred's rejoinder that Jean's bed in the separate bedroom under discussion was piled high with the same sizeable herd of stuffed animals that had occupied all her beds since childhood.
Not long afterward, at a gathering at the home of a parishioner, Steve and Fred found themselves in a corner surveying the host's music collection. "Look at this," said Fred, who was about half a glass of wine past his limit. "Multiple CDs of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler - and just this one of Delius. I wonder how that happened?"
Their host had been walking over to them anyhow and overheard the remark. "That's easy," he said. "The Delius was a gift. I can't stand Delius. I've never played that one, as a matter of fact."
"I thought so!" said Fred. "Delius is simply not challenging..."
But then Jean spotted the three in earnest discussion. She swooped in and seized Fred by the elbow. "That's enough of that," she said with a grimace that pretended to be a smile. "We have to mingle, you know," and steered him away.
Later the same evening, as she and Fred were about to leave, Fred reached for another of the snacks the host had been serving - bacon, melted cheese, and chili peppers on top of English muffins. Jean gave him a sharp look. "How many is that you've had?" she asked, with a barely concealed glance to the host's waistline, the girth of which was apparently something not respectable, in her view, unless it surrounded a bishop.
"Three," said Fred sheepishly, and pulled his hand back. Fred, it seemed, was going to have a career, whether he wanted one or not.
Steve was to be spared too many of these homely tableaux, since the norm among the Episcopalians is for deacons to remain in the parish where they are ordained for only one year. Usually during that year, they are ordained as full priests. After that time, they must find positions in other parishes. This was what Fred, like every other new priest, was obliged to do. With a wife at his side, he would prove to be such an attractive candidate that he had no problem securing a position as an associate priest at an even more respectable parish, St. Michael and All Angels, in a community 20 miles away.
As it happened, that town began to strike Steve as the perfect place to move, in his resolve to widen the distance between himself and his mother. It was 20 miles away, but it was on the other side of the city where he worked, so he would have the same commute. He could join St. Michael and All Angels, where Fred already knew him, so he'd have an easier time getting started in the new community.
He had some difficulty finding an excuse for the move that would convince his mother, of course. He settled on explaining that he'd begun to feel the need for a security building, but she countered that if all he wanted was a security building, there were plenty nearby - why go so far? At the same time, he began to get hang-up phone calls and silent messages on his phone mail, which he was sure came from his mother. Finally, one evening just before he moved, she called him.
"Steve," she said, "I just don't believe what you're telling me about wanting to move into a security building. Your father and I are very concerned, and why so much farther away? Are there things you think you need to conceal from us?"
"Mom, I need to do it for my sanity."
"Your 'sanity'. That New Age ascended master you used to listen to in college. He was always talking about 'sanity'. Have you gotten into that again?"
"No, Mom. This time I just need to keep from going crazy. Look, I'll give you my number at the new place as soon as I get settled in." He relished the idea of waiting as long as he could to do so.
The first Sunday after he moved, Steve turned up at St. Michael and All Angels and said hello to Fred after the service. "Do you want to get involved?" asked Fred. "If you do, I've got someone who needs a ride to church on Sundays. Give me a call at the office this week and I'll give you the details."
It turned out that there was a lady at a local hospital who was looking for someone to drive her to church. Fred said she lived at the hospital. "Sure," said Steve. "I'll do it," but the idea of someone living at a hospital sounded a little strange, and the image he had in his mind was of someone elderly and infirm. Who else, after all, needed a ride to church? Even so, he called over to the hospital and made arrangements. The lady's name was Susan Leeford. He'd stop by at ten the next Sunday. He could only leave a message at the desk; they couldn't get in touch with the lady herself, and they couldn't help him with any questions about whether she used a wheelchair or a walker.
He pulled up at the carport right at ten the following Sunday, and the only person he saw was a well-dressed woman of about thirty-five. He looked past her, trying to spy someone in a wheelchair in the lobby inside but nobody else was there. "Are you Steve?" the lady asked. "I'm Susan Leeford."
"I'm sorry," said Steve, "I should have figured out who you were."
"Oh, no. I'm sure you were expecting someone less - ambulatory. Don't worry. On my good days, I can walk just fine. I've had several operations, and I need a few more." When she mentioned operations, Steve couldn't help himself. He surreptitiously studied her wrists and looked for an Adam's apple: if it were a sex change, they couldn't fix those.
It wasn't a sex change. She was quite thin, almost anorexic, but that would go along with needing to stay in a hospital, and it left her free to choose the fashionable wardrobe she clearly preferred. For that matter, she wore her lipstick and eye shadow to match her pallor.
"I came here from California," she said a few minutes later, as they drove to the church.
"Where in California?"
"A couple of places... Hillsborough, St. Helena. Do you know California?"
"Only enough to know expensive real estate when I hear it."
"That was my ex-husband," she said. They sat together in the mass and went up to the communion rail almost as though they were a couple. A respectable couple. Indeed, a fashionable couple. When he took her back to the hospital, they agreed to make the trips to church together every Sunday.
"Do you like opera, Steve?" she asked him on the following Sunday. "The local company is doing La Bohème. I'd call a taxi and go, but I thought maybe you'd like to see it, too."
"Sure," he said, and the following week they went to the opera as well as church.
"I'm a little wobbly on my feet tonight," she said as they got to the theatre. "May I hold onto your arm?" So, they walked in with Susan holding onto his elbow with both hands, but soon enough she found it easier just to hold his hand. Ordinarily Steve would have thought this could only lead in a more physical direction, but he reminded himself that she was signing herself in and out of the hospital like a sophomore in a women's dorm.
Fred Dickson's career had been moving along quite well. St. Michael and All Angels, recognizing his skill at sermons, had sent him to a special program for young clergy that would help them polish their already evident talents, and it was plain the investment had paid off.
"So, let's look at today's reading in James's Epistle. 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights'. That sounds pretty cut and dried, even simple-minded. But where else do good things come from? Do repentance, renunciation, charity, forbearance, or reason itself come from atoms and molecules bumping together? The whole scientific model that we have of the created world has to do with natural selection: nobody gets a break. Nothing gets a break. If your legs are a little too short and you can't run fast enough, fine, you die, and someone whose legs are a little longer survives to reproduce. Where in the model we have of the natural world do we find anything like repentance, renunciation, charity, forbearance, or sweet reason itself?"
In that season of the year, at that time of the late morning, the sun shone down steeply through the windows in the church clearstory, into the nave, where it left patterns of light and shadow. The smoke from the incense picked out the sun's rays as they descended. Patches of light and shadow fell on Fred Dickson's vestments, and on his face as he spoke. When he turned slightly, it was in darkness; when he turned again, it was in light. He paused and took a sip of water from the glass that was in the pulpit. He hesitated and seemed about to say one thing, but stopped and seemed to change the subject.
"How does it work? How does divine logos reach us? I don't know. I can't give you an answer. Where do our thoughts come from? They appear in our minds the same way bubbles appear in a glass of ginger ale. We don't know where they come from... if any of us knew the whole truth, we'd go blind." He seemed to have some difficulty finding his way out of the pulpit.
Within another couple of weeks, Steve and Susan had reached the point where they exchanged good-bye kisses on the cheek when he dropped her off at the hospital. It was clearly no longer just a good deed he was doing in driving her around. On the other hand, he didn't know much more about her situation than he had on the day they met. The really bad time, the first operations, had apparently taken place in California - or at least, this is what he gathered from occasional remarks. She had been paralyzed for a while. It appeared that there had been a lawsuit, which had resulted in a handsome settlement, the proceeds of which were, in part, funding her current hospital stay.
On top of the medical problems, there were, she indicated, psychological problems. She gradually let it be known that the doctor she saw most frequently was in fact a psychiatrist - the therapy was largely to counter the issues that had led up to the lawsuit. All this came out on their various trips to church, concerts, dinner. If the idea of dating a woman who lived in a hospital weren't so odd, Steve would, if pressed, have said he was dating her.
She was his date, in all but name, to his mother's birthday party. His object in moving had never been to break off contact with his parents, just to set things on a more normal basis by interposing some distance between them. His mother had never liked any of his girlfriends. When he was younger and lived at home, she actively did whatever she could to discourage his relationships; later, in college and afterward, she'd apparently thought it more politic to treat any mention of girlfriends with stony silence.
Steve had begun to think that even if he one day brought home some genetically engineered hybrid of Meryl Streep and Martha Stewart, his mother would find a way to damn her with faint praise and then, at her leisure, pick her off as she chose. "Well, Steve, she's not quite conventionally pretty, is she? And she tries so hard..." On the other hand, her reaction to Susan was astonishing. At the birthday party, she pulled him aside in the kitchen. "She's gorgeous, Steve!" his mother said. She was beaming. In fact, she was trembling with enthusiasm. "She's wonderful! Oh, Steve... I just want what's good for you..."
"Let's go out to lunch. I'm in your area." It was Fred Dickson calling Steve at work. They got together, and soon enough Fred settled into some wine, reaching, as he was accustomed, his limit and maybe half a glass over it. "I'm driving a loaner from the body shop today," he said. "Last week some jerk rear-ended me. Brand new Lexus. Exactly two cars on the road, me and him. I stop for a red light, and he rear-ends me."
"Ridiculous," said Steve. "What happened then?"
"This collar, you know, is pretty confining. In a lot of ways. I can't get out of my car after something like that and chew the guy out. You can't believe how much I wanted to do that." He shook his head. "Brand new Lexus. I had to be meek and mild and just get the guy's license number and insurance."
"Well, let's have a good lunch," said Steve. "You know what they say about living well."
Fred sighed. "This collar can sometimes be a problem," he said again.
They rambled on about other subjects, some from back in the days when they were both at All Saints', some new. Fred probed a little into why Steve had moved. Steve was open about it. "I felt like I needed some distance from my parents," he said. "My mother especially. I didn't want to cut things off with them, but my mother had begun to take a little too much advantage of living nearby."
They talked only briefly about Susan Leeford. "Has she had you in to eat at the hospital's cafeteria?" Fred asked.
"No, she hasn't."
"Believe me, you're in luck. No food like this..." he gestured at the plates in front of them. "In fact, about all I figured I could keep down was some soft ice cream that they had from a machine. I think she was wondering what was wrong with me."
This, for Steve, was new and intriguing information. It stood to reason that Fred would have made a pastoral visit to Susan in the hospital. But Steve had never even thought about whether Susan would, or even could, invite him inside - he'd always left her at the door. He assumed that hospitals, unlike women's dormitories, didn't have parietal hours. But here was a whole area of Susan's life that she hadn't opened to him but apparently was willing to let others see.
He said nothing more on the subject, and they moved on.
The next time Steve drove Susan to church, she said "Why don't you pick me up at my apartment when we go out on Saturday?"
"I didn't know you had an apartment."
"It's mostly a place to keep my clothes. But they let me check out overnight if I've been good."
"If you've been good, huh?"
"It's one of the ways they have of controlling me." She said it with an ironic twist, but he still wasn't completely sure how to take that remark.
She gave him the address, and he stopped by for her there on the Saturday. As she'd said, it wasn't much, just a one-room with almost no furniture, just a mattress on the floor and a TV. The kitchen counter was covered with pill bottles and a plastic box with elaborate compartments that held various combinations of pills to be taken at various times.
"Actually," she said, "I don't really feel like going out tonight. Why don't we stay here and order a pizza?" So, they did. There wasn't much to do besides lie side by side on the mattress and watch the TV, so they did that, too. "You know," she said eventually, "I haven't told you much, have I?"
"No, you haven't."
"I wonder where I should start?"
"So, your doctors - you say they control you? he asked.
"They certainly do. They've threatened to have me placed under a conservator," but she said it in a way that it might not have happened at all. Steve couldn't think of a good reply, but she went on. "They have me taking lots of pills. You see them over there. The thing I'm careful about - the thing I'm always careful to do - is to hold back enough of them so I have an insurance policy. The big ones, I call those a house, they're house shaped. I make sure I always have enough of those. But so much for that!"
She'd been talking in an almost humorous, self-deprecating tone, where he couldn't be entirely sure how much of what she said was intended only for effect. "Sometimes," she said, "I tell the doctors I've done simply outlandish things, things I haven't done at all, just to watch their faces."
How much, he wondered, was she telling him just to watch his face? But the one thing he knew was that she seemed to be enjoying his company, and too many questions would spoil the mood. The tale she began to weave, in the same humorous and self-deprecating tone, was long and elaborate. It appeared, though it wasn't completely clear, that there may have been more than one ex-husband, and the number of operations she'd had, and exactly what was wrong with her, were matters still up in the air. She must have been to a prestige university, given the way she spoke, but she never mentioned her upbringing or education.
Clearly the situation was leading in only one direction, and that raised the question that had been at the back of Steve's mind since he'd met her. Assuming they were on the verge of having sex, how would he react to the scars of what she'd said were multiple operations? Maybe some would be old and easier to ignore, but what about recent ones, red and raw? Would he be up to the demands of chivalry in such a case? As he listened to her life story, he was increasingly preoccupied with that problem. Would she turn the lights out? Would she make strategic use of pajamas or bedclothes?
As it turned out, he needn't have worried. She left the lights on, and, driven by curiosity, he studied her, as carefully as he could without seeming morbid. There wasn't a mark on her, not even an appendectomy scar. Later, in the early hours of the morning, he lay awake trying to reconcile what she'd told him about operations with what he'd seen. Maybe the surgeons were so good they could conceal the scars. But that didn't match what he'd seen of people at the beach. Operations couldn't help but leave scars.
He went back to the question from his lunch with Fred Dickson: why had she never invited him into the hospital? And why was she taking all those pills if there didn't seem to be as much wrong with her physically as she'd led him to believe? The only thing he could think was that she was in fact in a psychiatric wing, and she didn't want him to know - but even so, that was a peculiar sort of psychiatric wing. She could check herself in and out more or less at will. But there didn't seem to be much other explanation for the differences between her stories about herself and what he'd actually seen.
Beyond the fact that Susan lived in a hospital (mostly), was likely in a psychiatric wing, and had the means to pay for what seemed to be very personalized care, he knew next to nothing. He considered opening the whole subject with Fred Dickson, to see how much Fred might be able to tell him without violating confidences - but quite possibly Fred knew nothing more than he did, or if he did, his lips were professionally sealed.
The Wednesday of the following week, he knew he had a day to relax. He had a conference in the city that afternoon, with no need to go in to his office in the morning, and the train to the city was convenient enough that he figured he'd ride in before lunch and save the hassle of driving. It proved, in fact, to be a glorious early summer day, and he found an empty seat next to a window. He idly watched the scenery roll past as the train accelerated from the station.
The line curved through a park, with cycling and hiking trails that paralleled the track for a short distance. On the hiking path, he spied a pair of figures that seemed oddly familiar, even from behind: a tall man with curly brown hair; a woman, slight in build, wearing expensive-looking jeans. They were walking hand in hand. They turned to watch the train go by, and as they did, with a sudden start, he recognized their faces: Fred Dickson and Susan Leeford. At the same time, with the instinct people have when they realize they're being noticed, they looked at the train window and saw his face. Immediately they dropped each other's hands. Fred wasn't wearing his clerical collar; this wasn't a pastoral visit.
He burned the rest of the way into the city. In fact, he burned for the rest of the afternoon, and for a day or so after that. He had never quite taken Susan Leeford at face value, but that didn't keep him from feeling he'd been had, and he'd been had by both of them. How useful would he have been, after all, as a beard to keep tongues from wagging in the parish about an affair between Fred and Susan? Or, leaving that possibility aside, how much of what had happened could be explained simply by seeing Susan as a rich, eccentric woman who'd decided to have an affair with her chauffeur?
Nevertheless, he kept wondering if she'd show up the next Sunday morning to go to mass. He decided he really wouldn't lose anything if he drove by; she would either be waiting for him, or she wouldn't. As it turned out, she was waiting as usual. Neither said anything as she got into the car, and they drove in silence for several minutes.
She finally spoke. "Steve, I tell lies all the time. I tell the doctors lies; they know I'm lying, it's just a big game. I tell everyone lies. For once, I'm going to tell you the truth. I wasn't using you. You don't know how much I think of you. But all the same, you didn't get much of a deal from me, did you?
"No," he said. "I didn't."
"That's me. You get me, you get the deal. You know, I'm never going to be able to leave the hospital. Whichever one I'm in, I'm never going to be able to leave it. Is that the deal you want?"
"Does that have to be the deal?"
"That's the deal. I can't stop lying, because I'm not strong enough, and I can't leave the hospital, because I'm not strong enough. Now I've told you the truth. No guarantees on anything else I ever say."
There wasn't much Steve could answer, because there wouldn't be any guarantees on anything she said in reply. But they went on to mass, and when the time came, they held hands as they went to the altar rail. But it began to dawn on Steve, very dimly at first, that whatever the current norms might or might not be among the Episcopalians in these enlightened times, in the eyes of the ancient church, this had been a silly charade.
"Steve, you don't know how much I think of you," she said as she left his car at the hospital. "I'm very sure you're going to do much better."
Steve never spoke directly to Fred after the scene in the park, but a few Sundays later, the rector at St Michael's stood up before the start of mass to announce that Fred Dickson had unexpectedly left his position there as an associate, and he would be replaced by a Father Donald West within a few weeks. And not long after Father West started, Steve had an opportunity to pull him aside at coffee hour.
"I was sorry to hear about Fred Dickson's leaving," Steve said. "I'd followed him over from All Saints', and I thought I knew him fairly well. Can you say anything about what happened?"
"Well, I'm new here, and nobody's explained anything at all to me," Father West said. "It's really none of my business, and I just can't say anything about it - even if I knew more, these things are highly confidential, and I'd be in a lot of trouble if I let it out. The two people who know the most would be the rector and the senior warden, but I wouldn't even bother trying to ask. Or the bishop, of course. The one thing you could do would be to check the diocesan website, search for Fred's name, and see how he's listed. I'm really sorry I can't help."
A month or two later, Steve had a chance to ask another priest if he knew anything about Fred and got a much shorter reply: "Fred Dickson? I'm not sure if I remember that name. He might have gone to another diocese." At least as far as the diocese was concerned, Fred had moved on. Now and then, Steve would search the web for the name, and at one point, a Fred Dickson turned up as executive director of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin YMCA, but that was about it, and Steve decided there wouldn't be much point in contacting the guy to find out either way.
He really couldn't rule out that Susan and Fred had run off together. That fit as well as anything else.
But not long before everything went south, on a visit to his parents, Steve spotted a note on a St. Michael and All Angels letterhead lying open on his mother's antique secretary. It must have arrived that day. He was interested, of course, because his parents were still faithfully attending All Saints' and would have no reason to speak with anyone at his new parish. Since the note lay open, he had no problem reading it:
It was signed Fred Dickson, with a cross next to the signature. Fred, it seemed, had received one of his mother's patented letters. He could imagine what it contained: Steve had up and moved. He'd been behaving erratically before he left. He appeared uninterested in prudent advice. He was probably neither saving his money nor watching his diet. Could Fred, whom she knew to be trustworthy and responsible from his time at All Saints', check on her wayward boy and see if some action needed to be taken? Steve gave a mild sigh of relief: At least Fred had contributed that much, but Steve's mother was who she was.
Wasn't the whole point that Steve had moved just a little bit farther away?
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"I'm sorry," she said, pushing past him in the hall.
"What...?" he asked.
"I just wanted to say," she said, "you look very unhappy. Very unhappy." And she opened the door to the stairwell and scurried down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator. Steve could think of one reason why he might look unhappy, and that would be if, returning home from work, he found his mother shoving a note under his apartment door.
When he got inside his place, he picked up the envelope and opened it. It was in his mother's compulsively neat handwriting. "Dear Steve," it read:
I know that you have sometimes mentioned that you are interested in buying a house. That is a very worthwhile goal to have. However, I am concerned that you are not aware of how expensive a house is, and you are not planning adequately for this purchase. You must set aside sufficient money each month in order to save for a down payment. I do not believe you are doing this.
It went on in this vein. In fact, the letter was three pages long.
Steve had been living, without thinking the matter all the way through, in fairly close emotional as well as geographic proximity to his parents ever since he'd gotten out of college. This was partly from a desire to make up for a period of underachievement, hard drinking, and drug abuse that lasted throughout his adolescence. In fact, it culminated in a disciplinary hearing for an episode the exposition of which astonished even the dean in its length and complexity, and which resulted, in the quaint word of the institution, in Steve's separation from it. This in turn required a scramble on his parents' part to find him a place in a school that was, if such a thing could be possible, less prestigious than the first.
At some point during this latter part of his education, Steve had, however dimly, come to perceive a certain light, and part of that was an urge to be more filial, though as time went on, he began to recognize that the forces that had driven him to his earlier prodigality were not exclusively internal. His parents had always been free with heavy-handed and intrusive advice, and it was only as the years progressed that this tendency began to resolve itself into something other than the usual conflicts between parents and their growing children.
It was that afternoon's particular business in the hallway and the note shoved under his door that made it finally clear to him that his mother was taking unwarranted advantage of circumstances as they had evolved. In fact, he reflected, you didn't need to be Freud to think that his mother's influence had borne some responsibility for the long dry spell he'd had with women. His best bet would be to move farther away, though since he liked his job and didn't want to leave it, he'd have to stay in the same general area. It wouldn't hurt to move into a security building and have his new phone unlisted, though.
As he thought about where he might move, he realized that he had an easy choice, and this was related to the gradual reconciliation, at least in lifestyle, that he'd made with his parents. A couple of years earlier, he'd begun to attend church with them, though not for their reasons. They felt that All Saints' Episcopal Church was a bastion of respectability - and indeed it was. Steve was more inclined to take his visits there as something experimental, a furtherance of small brushes with the numinous that he'd had during his own less respectable years.
During his visits there, he'd gotten to know Fred Dickson, who in fact had turned up at All Saints' at just about the same time Steve had, but under different circumstances: Fred was a newly minted deacon, which among the Episcopalians is the first level of ordained clergy. And Fred was the sort of young clergyman that any denomination would be proud to get: he was tall, broad-shouldered, with a straight nose, firm lips, a dimpled chin, and a full head of curly brown hair. His teeth, square and regular, flashed white in ready smiles. His only flaw was a slight cross-eyedness, but he cured that by keeping his glasses on, and mostly nobody noticed it.
Right after he arrived at All Saints', Fred met Jean Turnbull, who was by far the most eligible of the young women in the parish, both good looking and of a highly respectable family. Steve, in fact, would have liked to have dated her himself, but a certain lack of respectability continued to hang about him, and he knew he didn't have a chance. A handsome, athletic member of the clergy was the kind of suitor who was almost predestined for someone like Jean - a corporate lawyer or an investment banker, after all, would be too bound up with commerce. They announced their engagement in the most respectable way anyone could: Fred published the banns himself, from the pulpit.
At first, Steve envied Fred his social and romantic success, but soon enough it became apparent that Fred hadn't entered into a life of unmitigated felicity. There had been an embarrassingly public discussion at a church social event, in which Jean accused Fred of a certain obtuseness for not having understood, prior to their engagement, that at Jean's social level it was expected that husband and wife occupied separate bedrooms. This was made no easier for listeners to bear by Fred's rejoinder that Jean's bed in the separate bedroom under discussion was piled high with the same sizeable herd of stuffed animals that had occupied all her beds since childhood.
Not long afterward, at a gathering at the home of a parishioner, Steve and Fred found themselves in a corner surveying the host's music collection. "Look at this," said Fred, who was about half a glass of wine past his limit. "Multiple CDs of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler - and just this one of Delius. I wonder how that happened?"
Their host had been walking over to them anyhow and overheard the remark. "That's easy," he said. "The Delius was a gift. I can't stand Delius. I've never played that one, as a matter of fact."
"I thought so!" said Fred. "Delius is simply not challenging..."
But then Jean spotted the three in earnest discussion. She swooped in and seized Fred by the elbow. "That's enough of that," she said with a grimace that pretended to be a smile. "We have to mingle, you know," and steered him away.
Later the same evening, as she and Fred were about to leave, Fred reached for another of the snacks the host had been serving - bacon, melted cheese, and chili peppers on top of English muffins. Jean gave him a sharp look. "How many is that you've had?" she asked, with a barely concealed glance to the host's waistline, the girth of which was apparently something not respectable, in her view, unless it surrounded a bishop.
"Three," said Fred sheepishly, and pulled his hand back. Fred, it seemed, was going to have a career, whether he wanted one or not.
Steve was to be spared too many of these homely tableaux, since the norm among the Episcopalians is for deacons to remain in the parish where they are ordained for only one year. Usually during that year, they are ordained as full priests. After that time, they must find positions in other parishes. This was what Fred, like every other new priest, was obliged to do. With a wife at his side, he would prove to be such an attractive candidate that he had no problem securing a position as an associate priest at an even more respectable parish, St. Michael and All Angels, in a community 20 miles away.
As it happened, that town began to strike Steve as the perfect place to move, in his resolve to widen the distance between himself and his mother. It was 20 miles away, but it was on the other side of the city where he worked, so he would have the same commute. He could join St. Michael and All Angels, where Fred already knew him, so he'd have an easier time getting started in the new community.
He had some difficulty finding an excuse for the move that would convince his mother, of course. He settled on explaining that he'd begun to feel the need for a security building, but she countered that if all he wanted was a security building, there were plenty nearby - why go so far? At the same time, he began to get hang-up phone calls and silent messages on his phone mail, which he was sure came from his mother. Finally, one evening just before he moved, she called him.
"Steve," she said, "I just don't believe what you're telling me about wanting to move into a security building. Your father and I are very concerned, and why so much farther away? Are there things you think you need to conceal from us?"
"Mom, I need to do it for my sanity."
"Your 'sanity'. That New Age ascended master you used to listen to in college. He was always talking about 'sanity'. Have you gotten into that again?"
"No, Mom. This time I just need to keep from going crazy. Look, I'll give you my number at the new place as soon as I get settled in." He relished the idea of waiting as long as he could to do so.
The first Sunday after he moved, Steve turned up at St. Michael and All Angels and said hello to Fred after the service. "Do you want to get involved?" asked Fred. "If you do, I've got someone who needs a ride to church on Sundays. Give me a call at the office this week and I'll give you the details."
It turned out that there was a lady at a local hospital who was looking for someone to drive her to church. Fred said she lived at the hospital. "Sure," said Steve. "I'll do it," but the idea of someone living at a hospital sounded a little strange, and the image he had in his mind was of someone elderly and infirm. Who else, after all, needed a ride to church? Even so, he called over to the hospital and made arrangements. The lady's name was Susan Leeford. He'd stop by at ten the next Sunday. He could only leave a message at the desk; they couldn't get in touch with the lady herself, and they couldn't help him with any questions about whether she used a wheelchair or a walker.
He pulled up at the carport right at ten the following Sunday, and the only person he saw was a well-dressed woman of about thirty-five. He looked past her, trying to spy someone in a wheelchair in the lobby inside but nobody else was there. "Are you Steve?" the lady asked. "I'm Susan Leeford."
"I'm sorry," said Steve, "I should have figured out who you were."
"Oh, no. I'm sure you were expecting someone less - ambulatory. Don't worry. On my good days, I can walk just fine. I've had several operations, and I need a few more." When she mentioned operations, Steve couldn't help himself. He surreptitiously studied her wrists and looked for an Adam's apple: if it were a sex change, they couldn't fix those.
It wasn't a sex change. She was quite thin, almost anorexic, but that would go along with needing to stay in a hospital, and it left her free to choose the fashionable wardrobe she clearly preferred. For that matter, she wore her lipstick and eye shadow to match her pallor.
"I came here from California," she said a few minutes later, as they drove to the church.
"Where in California?"
"A couple of places... Hillsborough, St. Helena. Do you know California?"
"Only enough to know expensive real estate when I hear it."
"That was my ex-husband," she said. They sat together in the mass and went up to the communion rail almost as though they were a couple. A respectable couple. Indeed, a fashionable couple. When he took her back to the hospital, they agreed to make the trips to church together every Sunday.
"Do you like opera, Steve?" she asked him on the following Sunday. "The local company is doing La Bohème. I'd call a taxi and go, but I thought maybe you'd like to see it, too."
"Sure," he said, and the following week they went to the opera as well as church.
"I'm a little wobbly on my feet tonight," she said as they got to the theatre. "May I hold onto your arm?" So, they walked in with Susan holding onto his elbow with both hands, but soon enough she found it easier just to hold his hand. Ordinarily Steve would have thought this could only lead in a more physical direction, but he reminded himself that she was signing herself in and out of the hospital like a sophomore in a women's dorm.
Fred Dickson's career had been moving along quite well. St. Michael and All Angels, recognizing his skill at sermons, had sent him to a special program for young clergy that would help them polish their already evident talents, and it was plain the investment had paid off.
"So, let's look at today's reading in James's Epistle. 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights'. That sounds pretty cut and dried, even simple-minded. But where else do good things come from? Do repentance, renunciation, charity, forbearance, or reason itself come from atoms and molecules bumping together? The whole scientific model that we have of the created world has to do with natural selection: nobody gets a break. Nothing gets a break. If your legs are a little too short and you can't run fast enough, fine, you die, and someone whose legs are a little longer survives to reproduce. Where in the model we have of the natural world do we find anything like repentance, renunciation, charity, forbearance, or sweet reason itself?"
In that season of the year, at that time of the late morning, the sun shone down steeply through the windows in the church clearstory, into the nave, where it left patterns of light and shadow. The smoke from the incense picked out the sun's rays as they descended. Patches of light and shadow fell on Fred Dickson's vestments, and on his face as he spoke. When he turned slightly, it was in darkness; when he turned again, it was in light. He paused and took a sip of water from the glass that was in the pulpit. He hesitated and seemed about to say one thing, but stopped and seemed to change the subject.
"How does it work? How does divine logos reach us? I don't know. I can't give you an answer. Where do our thoughts come from? They appear in our minds the same way bubbles appear in a glass of ginger ale. We don't know where they come from... if any of us knew the whole truth, we'd go blind." He seemed to have some difficulty finding his way out of the pulpit.
Within another couple of weeks, Steve and Susan had reached the point where they exchanged good-bye kisses on the cheek when he dropped her off at the hospital. It was clearly no longer just a good deed he was doing in driving her around. On the other hand, he didn't know much more about her situation than he had on the day they met. The really bad time, the first operations, had apparently taken place in California - or at least, this is what he gathered from occasional remarks. She had been paralyzed for a while. It appeared that there had been a lawsuit, which had resulted in a handsome settlement, the proceeds of which were, in part, funding her current hospital stay.
On top of the medical problems, there were, she indicated, psychological problems. She gradually let it be known that the doctor she saw most frequently was in fact a psychiatrist - the therapy was largely to counter the issues that had led up to the lawsuit. All this came out on their various trips to church, concerts, dinner. If the idea of dating a woman who lived in a hospital weren't so odd, Steve would, if pressed, have said he was dating her.
She was his date, in all but name, to his mother's birthday party. His object in moving had never been to break off contact with his parents, just to set things on a more normal basis by interposing some distance between them. His mother had never liked any of his girlfriends. When he was younger and lived at home, she actively did whatever she could to discourage his relationships; later, in college and afterward, she'd apparently thought it more politic to treat any mention of girlfriends with stony silence.
Steve had begun to think that even if he one day brought home some genetically engineered hybrid of Meryl Streep and Martha Stewart, his mother would find a way to damn her with faint praise and then, at her leisure, pick her off as she chose. "Well, Steve, she's not quite conventionally pretty, is she? And she tries so hard..." On the other hand, her reaction to Susan was astonishing. At the birthday party, she pulled him aside in the kitchen. "She's gorgeous, Steve!" his mother said. She was beaming. In fact, she was trembling with enthusiasm. "She's wonderful! Oh, Steve... I just want what's good for you..."
"Let's go out to lunch. I'm in your area." It was Fred Dickson calling Steve at work. They got together, and soon enough Fred settled into some wine, reaching, as he was accustomed, his limit and maybe half a glass over it. "I'm driving a loaner from the body shop today," he said. "Last week some jerk rear-ended me. Brand new Lexus. Exactly two cars on the road, me and him. I stop for a red light, and he rear-ends me."
"Ridiculous," said Steve. "What happened then?"
"This collar, you know, is pretty confining. In a lot of ways. I can't get out of my car after something like that and chew the guy out. You can't believe how much I wanted to do that." He shook his head. "Brand new Lexus. I had to be meek and mild and just get the guy's license number and insurance."
"Well, let's have a good lunch," said Steve. "You know what they say about living well."
Fred sighed. "This collar can sometimes be a problem," he said again.
They rambled on about other subjects, some from back in the days when they were both at All Saints', some new. Fred probed a little into why Steve had moved. Steve was open about it. "I felt like I needed some distance from my parents," he said. "My mother especially. I didn't want to cut things off with them, but my mother had begun to take a little too much advantage of living nearby."
They talked only briefly about Susan Leeford. "Has she had you in to eat at the hospital's cafeteria?" Fred asked.
"No, she hasn't."
"Believe me, you're in luck. No food like this..." he gestured at the plates in front of them. "In fact, about all I figured I could keep down was some soft ice cream that they had from a machine. I think she was wondering what was wrong with me."
This, for Steve, was new and intriguing information. It stood to reason that Fred would have made a pastoral visit to Susan in the hospital. But Steve had never even thought about whether Susan would, or even could, invite him inside - he'd always left her at the door. He assumed that hospitals, unlike women's dormitories, didn't have parietal hours. But here was a whole area of Susan's life that she hadn't opened to him but apparently was willing to let others see.
He said nothing more on the subject, and they moved on.
The next time Steve drove Susan to church, she said "Why don't you pick me up at my apartment when we go out on Saturday?"
"I didn't know you had an apartment."
"It's mostly a place to keep my clothes. But they let me check out overnight if I've been good."
"If you've been good, huh?"
"It's one of the ways they have of controlling me." She said it with an ironic twist, but he still wasn't completely sure how to take that remark.
She gave him the address, and he stopped by for her there on the Saturday. As she'd said, it wasn't much, just a one-room with almost no furniture, just a mattress on the floor and a TV. The kitchen counter was covered with pill bottles and a plastic box with elaborate compartments that held various combinations of pills to be taken at various times.
"Actually," she said, "I don't really feel like going out tonight. Why don't we stay here and order a pizza?" So, they did. There wasn't much to do besides lie side by side on the mattress and watch the TV, so they did that, too. "You know," she said eventually, "I haven't told you much, have I?"
"No, you haven't."
"I wonder where I should start?"
"So, your doctors - you say they control you? he asked.
"They certainly do. They've threatened to have me placed under a conservator," but she said it in a way that it might not have happened at all. Steve couldn't think of a good reply, but she went on. "They have me taking lots of pills. You see them over there. The thing I'm careful about - the thing I'm always careful to do - is to hold back enough of them so I have an insurance policy. The big ones, I call those a house, they're house shaped. I make sure I always have enough of those. But so much for that!"
She'd been talking in an almost humorous, self-deprecating tone, where he couldn't be entirely sure how much of what she said was intended only for effect. "Sometimes," she said, "I tell the doctors I've done simply outlandish things, things I haven't done at all, just to watch their faces."
How much, he wondered, was she telling him just to watch his face? But the one thing he knew was that she seemed to be enjoying his company, and too many questions would spoil the mood. The tale she began to weave, in the same humorous and self-deprecating tone, was long and elaborate. It appeared, though it wasn't completely clear, that there may have been more than one ex-husband, and the number of operations she'd had, and exactly what was wrong with her, were matters still up in the air. She must have been to a prestige university, given the way she spoke, but she never mentioned her upbringing or education.
Clearly the situation was leading in only one direction, and that raised the question that had been at the back of Steve's mind since he'd met her. Assuming they were on the verge of having sex, how would he react to the scars of what she'd said were multiple operations? Maybe some would be old and easier to ignore, but what about recent ones, red and raw? Would he be up to the demands of chivalry in such a case? As he listened to her life story, he was increasingly preoccupied with that problem. Would she turn the lights out? Would she make strategic use of pajamas or bedclothes?
As it turned out, he needn't have worried. She left the lights on, and, driven by curiosity, he studied her, as carefully as he could without seeming morbid. There wasn't a mark on her, not even an appendectomy scar. Later, in the early hours of the morning, he lay awake trying to reconcile what she'd told him about operations with what he'd seen. Maybe the surgeons were so good they could conceal the scars. But that didn't match what he'd seen of people at the beach. Operations couldn't help but leave scars.
He went back to the question from his lunch with Fred Dickson: why had she never invited him into the hospital? And why was she taking all those pills if there didn't seem to be as much wrong with her physically as she'd led him to believe? The only thing he could think was that she was in fact in a psychiatric wing, and she didn't want him to know - but even so, that was a peculiar sort of psychiatric wing. She could check herself in and out more or less at will. But there didn't seem to be much other explanation for the differences between her stories about herself and what he'd actually seen.
Beyond the fact that Susan lived in a hospital (mostly), was likely in a psychiatric wing, and had the means to pay for what seemed to be very personalized care, he knew next to nothing. He considered opening the whole subject with Fred Dickson, to see how much Fred might be able to tell him without violating confidences - but quite possibly Fred knew nothing more than he did, or if he did, his lips were professionally sealed.
The Wednesday of the following week, he knew he had a day to relax. He had a conference in the city that afternoon, with no need to go in to his office in the morning, and the train to the city was convenient enough that he figured he'd ride in before lunch and save the hassle of driving. It proved, in fact, to be a glorious early summer day, and he found an empty seat next to a window. He idly watched the scenery roll past as the train accelerated from the station.
The line curved through a park, with cycling and hiking trails that paralleled the track for a short distance. On the hiking path, he spied a pair of figures that seemed oddly familiar, even from behind: a tall man with curly brown hair; a woman, slight in build, wearing expensive-looking jeans. They were walking hand in hand. They turned to watch the train go by, and as they did, with a sudden start, he recognized their faces: Fred Dickson and Susan Leeford. At the same time, with the instinct people have when they realize they're being noticed, they looked at the train window and saw his face. Immediately they dropped each other's hands. Fred wasn't wearing his clerical collar; this wasn't a pastoral visit.
He burned the rest of the way into the city. In fact, he burned for the rest of the afternoon, and for a day or so after that. He had never quite taken Susan Leeford at face value, but that didn't keep him from feeling he'd been had, and he'd been had by both of them. How useful would he have been, after all, as a beard to keep tongues from wagging in the parish about an affair between Fred and Susan? Or, leaving that possibility aside, how much of what had happened could be explained simply by seeing Susan as a rich, eccentric woman who'd decided to have an affair with her chauffeur?
Nevertheless, he kept wondering if she'd show up the next Sunday morning to go to mass. He decided he really wouldn't lose anything if he drove by; she would either be waiting for him, or she wouldn't. As it turned out, she was waiting as usual. Neither said anything as she got into the car, and they drove in silence for several minutes.
She finally spoke. "Steve, I tell lies all the time. I tell the doctors lies; they know I'm lying, it's just a big game. I tell everyone lies. For once, I'm going to tell you the truth. I wasn't using you. You don't know how much I think of you. But all the same, you didn't get much of a deal from me, did you?
"No," he said. "I didn't."
"That's me. You get me, you get the deal. You know, I'm never going to be able to leave the hospital. Whichever one I'm in, I'm never going to be able to leave it. Is that the deal you want?"
"Does that have to be the deal?"
"That's the deal. I can't stop lying, because I'm not strong enough, and I can't leave the hospital, because I'm not strong enough. Now I've told you the truth. No guarantees on anything else I ever say."
There wasn't much Steve could answer, because there wouldn't be any guarantees on anything she said in reply. But they went on to mass, and when the time came, they held hands as they went to the altar rail. But it began to dawn on Steve, very dimly at first, that whatever the current norms might or might not be among the Episcopalians in these enlightened times, in the eyes of the ancient church, this had been a silly charade.
"Steve, you don't know how much I think of you," she said as she left his car at the hospital. "I'm very sure you're going to do much better."
Steve never spoke directly to Fred after the scene in the park, but a few Sundays later, the rector at St Michael's stood up before the start of mass to announce that Fred Dickson had unexpectedly left his position there as an associate, and he would be replaced by a Father Donald West within a few weeks. And not long after Father West started, Steve had an opportunity to pull him aside at coffee hour.
"I was sorry to hear about Fred Dickson's leaving," Steve said. "I'd followed him over from All Saints', and I thought I knew him fairly well. Can you say anything about what happened?"
"Well, I'm new here, and nobody's explained anything at all to me," Father West said. "It's really none of my business, and I just can't say anything about it - even if I knew more, these things are highly confidential, and I'd be in a lot of trouble if I let it out. The two people who know the most would be the rector and the senior warden, but I wouldn't even bother trying to ask. Or the bishop, of course. The one thing you could do would be to check the diocesan website, search for Fred's name, and see how he's listed. I'm really sorry I can't help."
A month or two later, Steve had a chance to ask another priest if he knew anything about Fred and got a much shorter reply: "Fred Dickson? I'm not sure if I remember that name. He might have gone to another diocese." At least as far as the diocese was concerned, Fred had moved on. Now and then, Steve would search the web for the name, and at one point, a Fred Dickson turned up as executive director of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin YMCA, but that was about it, and Steve decided there wouldn't be much point in contacting the guy to find out either way.
He really couldn't rule out that Susan and Fred had run off together. That fit as well as anything else.
But not long before everything went south, on a visit to his parents, Steve spotted a note on a St. Michael and All Angels letterhead lying open on his mother's antique secretary. It must have arrived that day. He was interested, of course, because his parents were still faithfully attending All Saints' and would have no reason to speak with anyone at his new parish. Since the note lay open, he had no problem reading it:
Dear Mrs. Fuller,
Thank you for your letter. I've looked into the situation, and I don't think there's anything for you to worry about.
It was signed Fred Dickson, with a cross next to the signature. Fred, it seemed, had received one of his mother's patented letters. He could imagine what it contained: Steve had up and moved. He'd been behaving erratically before he left. He appeared uninterested in prudent advice. He was probably neither saving his money nor watching his diet. Could Fred, whom she knew to be trustworthy and responsible from his time at All Saints', check on her wayward boy and see if some action needed to be taken? Steve gave a mild sigh of relief: At least Fred had contributed that much, but Steve's mother was who she was.
Wasn't the whole point that Steve had moved just a little bit farther away?
What a wild ride "Crazy" is! John Bruce captures the exhilarating car games chaos brilliantly. It reminds me of those intense moments in car games where every decision counts.
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