Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

People start bending, going down on their hands and knees to retrieve the red, blue, and yellow pills. I resist the urge to kick the one closest to me in the backside and instead head back to my room. Yes. I will break every rule, transgress every line. And I prepare myself for battle as reinforcements begin arriving.

Something nags. Just out of reach. Something to be shuddered at. Something bloody but unbowed by my resistance. This dark shame. A pain too lonely to bear.

Visitors come and go. When they head toward the exit, I always follow, I quietly move in, ingratiate myself with the person or persons leaving. When they pass through the door, I will too. It’s that simple. No matter that I’ve always been stopped. One day it will work. No one will notice. No one will realize until mealtime. Then I will be long gone. I will eventually make it. Next time for certain.

There is a woman here who is always surrounded by people. Visitors, night and day. Beloved by all. She is one of the lucky ones. She doesn’t know where she is, she doesn’t always recognize her husband or children, she wears diapers, and she’s lost many of her words, but she is sweet and serene. She is descending with dignity.

The Vietnam vet, on the other hand, is alone. No visitors. He continually and loudly relives his glory days or his nightmares, depending on the day or even the hour. He either did or did not participate in a massacre, one of the famous ones. Some of the details ring truer than others. Heaving a goat carcass into a well. The way blood mists when slicing a vein. Like me, he understands that he is incarcerated for crimes past.

James has come home today from one of his trips. From Albany this time. A tedious case, he says. His schedule is as draining as my own.

Like me, he hasn’t slowed down with age. Still as urgent, as engaged as when we were in graduate school. And for me, always that thrill, that sense of discovery, no matter how brief his absence. Not a conventional sort of good looks. Too sharp, too angular for most tastes. And dark. Where Mark got his darkness, darkness within as well as without.

James starts to sit down, then changes his mind and strides across the room, straightens my Calder where it hangs. Then comes back. Finally settles in the chair, but is not relaxed. On the edge of his chair, his foot tapping. Always in motion. Putting people on edge, wondering what he will do next. An extraordinarily useful weapon in the courtroom and in life. In a world where people usually behave as expected, James is exploratory surgery: slice and probe, and you discover things. Sometimes a malignancy. But frequently something that delights. Today he is unusually quiet, however. He waits a few moments before speaking.

You look like crap, he says. But I imagine that’s just a shadow of how you feel.

You always call it like it is, I say. And because his features are fading into the early morning gloom, Can you turn on the light?

I prefer it this way, he says, and falls silent. He is fiddling with something in his hands. I lean forward. It is some sort of engraved medallion on a chain. It is somehow important. I hold out my hand, palm up, in the universal gesture of give me. But he ignores that.

You forgot about this, he says. He holds it up by one finger, the medallion swinging slightly back and forth. It could be a problem, he says.

I am trying to remember. There is a connection I must make. But it eludes me. I reach again for the medal, this time intending to take rather than ask. But James swiftly pulls back his hand, denying me. And suddenly he is gone. I feel a sharp sense of loss, the prick of tears on my eyelashes.

People come and go so quickly here.

Mark sits with me in the great room. He pleads. Please, Mom. You know I wouldn’t ask for it if it weren’t important.

I am trying to understand. People are watching us. A scene! The television is off, they are hungry for drama. And here it is, with Mark and me as the central characters. Yet I still don’t comprehend what he is saying.

Mom, it’s just until the end of the year. Until we get our bonuses.

His hair wants cutting. Is he married yet? There was a girl. What happened to her? He looks so terribly young, they’re all so terribly young. I’ve asked Fiona but she says no. Mom, can you understand me? Mark at ten. My tender boy. Fiona even younger, but watching over him. He has broken the Millers’ garage window with his baseball bat on a dare and it’s Fiona who knocks on their door and offers to cut their lawn for six weeks to pay for it.

You shouldn’t have done that, I tell him. You should have taken responsibility.

Mom? Stay with me here.

And you came home drunk last night. I caught Fiona mopping up the vomit on the living room rug. Fiona watches out for you.

Yes, always Fiona. You don’t know how sick that makes me.

What have you done that even your little sister won’t cover for you?

Mom, I swear, I promise, this time will be the last. Now he is getting angry. You have more than you need. You’ll be giving it to me and Fiona anyway, eventually. What’s a little in advance?

More people are stopping and staring. Even the Vietnam vet pulls up a chair. Entertainment! Mark’s voice continues to rise in impotent fury.

If you just told Fiona that you agreed, she would give me the money. Why won’t you do this for me? Just this one last time.

I was a reluctant mother. And Mark was difficult to love, I remember trying to cuddle him when he was three or four and crying about some playground injury, and I felt frustrated by the awkwardness of it all, the sharp elbows and bony knees. Yet he is my boy.

Mom? He has been watching me closely.

Yes.

You’ll do it?

Do what?

Give me the money?

Is that what you wanted? Why didn’t you say? Yes, of course. Let me just get my checkbook.

I get up to go to my room for my purse, but Mark stops me. Holds out a notebook and a pen.

Mom, you don’t have a checkbook anymore. That’s in Fiona’s hands. All you have to do is write a note here saying you’ll lend me the money. Just those words: I will lend Mark $50,000. No, you need a couple more zeros on there. That’s right. Now sign it. Great! Wonderful! You won’t regret it, I promise you. I’ll show you that I can make things right.

He’s halfway to the door before collecting himself, turning back, and kissing me on the cheek. I love you, Mom. I know I’m a son of a bitch sometimes, but I do. And it’s not just the money talking.

Show’s over, I tell the people who have gathered around. Go to your rooms. Shoo . They scatter like cockroaches.

Love, love is everywhere. People are pairing off, two by two, sometimes three. Couplings that last perhaps an hour, perhaps a day. Junior high for the geriatric set.

The woman with no neck is utterly promiscuous. She will be intimate with anyone. Here that means holding hands. Sitting in the lounge side by side. Perhaps a hand on a thigh.Very few words spoken.

Husbands and wives show up, are looked at blankly. Some of them cry, all are relieved. A burden lifted. But these lovers. To be eternally seeking, to be besotted, to retreat to and be stuck at the most ignoble stage of life. God preserve me from ever going through that again.