“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 order.”
“Ah, an involuntary. Maybe a spitter, a scratcher, a kicker,” I speculated. “Are you going to strap her down?” I love the idea of watching a client resist. They show a spirit and a sense of justice that I don’t have. From the beginning, I had been a passive case. Take me away, bring me home, take me away, bring me home. This was my fourth trip back to Loiseaux’s. I knew the way so well that, once I got my license, I could get a job driving the van. I knew I would provide a better ride than Happy Harley does. Stimulating conversation. Better music. A scenic route. The only thing lacking would be Happy’s irrepressible good cheer.
We stopped in front of the Haggards’, a pillared and porticoed faux colonial set back from the street and approached through an ornamental gate into a circular driveway. Outside, a Benz and a monstrous Land Rover stood ready to rumble. It was obvious, from his choice of vehicles, that Mr. Haggard suffered from small-penis syndrome. Nothing like raw horsepower to bolster the self-esteem of the limp-dicked. The covered portico was ringed with lights, blinking cheerfully as if announcing to the world that sanity and good cheer dwelled within. What a hoax. I pictured the Haggards as a family of psychic mutants, incestuous, abusive, Republican. Within dwelled violence and mendacity.
I like rich people, actually. Their children have interesting mental conditions. Not your standard ADDs or ADHDs that are easily medicated with the usual household drugs but disturbances in a more sociopathic vein. Anger issues. Sex issues. Authority issues. Mainly, my kind of issues. Issues that make you a person of some depth. Issues that make you an astute observer of the human world, a provocative conversationalist, a skilled manipulator of the powers that be. Beats knee jerking and head banging. I couldn’t wait to meet Miss Entropia.
Harley parked the van in front of the covered portico, but, true to procedure, he stayed inside. He turned on the CB and announced, “Pickup to Base, Pickup to Base. I’m at the site. Over.”
“Base to Pickup. We’re calling the client’s parents. Over.”
“I’m on it. Over and out.”
I loved those old-fashioned CB radios. They made everything sound so military.
Harley signaled his presence with three taps on the horn, as was the usual first step when doing an involuntary. The porch lights came on, the house suddenly awakening. Following the established procedure, someone would appear at the entrance, give the go-ahead nod, and then leave the door unlocked. The family would try to reason with their kid, who might have locked herself inside a bathroom with a medicine cabinet full of downers, or held a gun to her head, or shackled herself to a bedpost. Much conversation might ensue before Happy Harley was brought into the scene.
Once they decided they needed him, the lights would blink three times. Harley would rush in with a blanket that he would place over the involuntary’s head and shoulders to confuse and disorient her. Then, he’d quickly lead her out of the house and push her inside the van. He’d strap her to the backseat and then slide the side door closed with a bang. Sometimes, if the involuntary was a young kid, he’d wrap him up in his wrestler’s bear hug and bodily lift him into the vehicle, all the time cooing endearments and positive thoughts. The whole maneuver would take less than sixty seconds. I’d seen it happen. This guy was a paragon of fluid coordination, a graceful thing to see.
Meanwhile, he warned me to stay put and not get in the way. “This will be easy,” he said,