DAY 122: Sunday, February 7, 2010: You don’t need a bathroom break until after two cases of beer.
Utmost insanity.
I have an vague memory of waking with my head on the keyboard, breaking to eat and walk the dogs, then returning to finish in time for the midnight deadline tonight. It’s the Amazon writing contest to discover “new” writers (I’m old), so I banged out a few thousand more words and started an editing frenzy that discovered the usual multitude of mistakes and so forth (the italicized first person had to be altered to keep the fast pace going, and match the rest. Stuff like that). I finished and submitted at 10:37 pm, after three days of sick night and day typing, so tomorrow I’ll head into Massachusetts to meet crazy friends and light up a gun range with several exotic weapons, and I have no idea why this is fun. They love black powder and I love long distance, having been trained by a Marine sniper named Bob Koteen out in Minnesota; I’ll try to hit nail heads at a few hundred yards. I couldn’t shoot anything that breathes, but paper, cans, and nails are fun. Then I’ll cheer like crazy for the Saints, but enjoy it anyway if they lose. I have no idea why. Blah blah here’s more story . . .
Janelle giggled like a small child, loving every second of this family reunion, but when the giggling finally stopped, Rhiannon looked deeply into her mother’s eyes, and smiles turned to silent tears of gratitude, holding each other close. They were family once again, and later that night Janelle did some serious catching up in the soul kitchen, sitting across from Ferg with Fiona nursing China tea at the island, and little Rhiannon doing homework in the living room, between colorful crayon renderings of a gorgeous genius mother.
“I can sit here all night and tell you the little things I see,” Janelle explained. “Nervous excitement in Rhiannon’s eyes that require my comforting attention, another kind of nervous excitement from Fiona’s attentive mentoring program . . .”
Janelle trailed off, looking to her sister-in-law. “Is she full ninja yet?”
“Close.”
“Right.”
There were more smiles and laughter until it came time for Fiona to check Rhiannon’s homework, passing her off to Janelle at bedtime, mother and daughter lying down to cuddle and chat until sleep took the little girl elsewhere, and Janelle quietly switched spots with Fiona, the celebrity patient from Nutmeg Highway creeping out to read her long lost husband.
Ferg explained his dramatic departure from Victory Engineering in detail, and Janelle mentioned the ironic timing of a couple breaking loose from oppression.
“Your job sounds worse than the insane asylum.”
“Good thing I didn’t bring guns.”
“I can sense a fresh energy,” Janelle said, sipping tea from Fiona’s stash. “I can see a level of intensity coming off you like nothing before; certainly not during the old daily grind with those bottom feeding scumbags.”
“That’s just me needing a shower.”
“Goes without saying.”
Smiles.
“And you,” Ferg said.
“Went very deep to get here.”
“Center of the earth, baby.”
“And you came in the wink of an eye.”
“Like a finger to the moon.”
“Enter the Dragon. Very appropriate.”
“If I ever knew what was going on, I would’ve killed to get you out.”
“I almost did.”
“Remind me to change our current health plan.”
“Fuck that,” Janelle said, putting the tea aside. “Are all your parts in working order?”
“No way.”
“Way.”
Ferg watched her closely, a nightmare flash of Candy before his eyes, and a very tense moment when Janelle’s eyes changed, like she saw something there.
Janelle whispered “What,” as if the secret had been found.
Ferg looked down, trying to cover. “I thought it might be like those prison movies, where it takes a long time for you to come around again with intimacy and all that.”
“Are you nuts?”
He looked up; the ironic nature of her question striking them both at the same time.
Janelle stood. “To the bat cave . . .”
And they climbed narrow steps to Ferg’s converted attic room, not making the mad and passionate love one would expect after years of separation, but the slow drumbeat of rediscovery, exploring bodies that had changed a bit over the years.
“How the hell did you become so strong and . . . flexible?” Ferg asked, finally exhausted as Janelle rested her head on his chest.
“I had to work a deal,” she breathed, walking long, sinewy fingers across waves of abdominal muscles. “Horrible sacrifices to get serious workout time.”
His voice caught, thinking of Janelle’s imprisonment. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”
She rolled onto him then, searching to finally reach down and feel fresh tears starting, his heaving stomach giving them away. “I know, my Fergus McCrory. I know everything about you and everything that worries you and everything you feel right now. It’s nearly impossible to explain the level of sensitivity I’ve obtained, gathering strength in a twelve by twelve room with no communication until those little door slots opened to feed me, and those visits became a very big intrusion over time.”
Ferg held his breath, listening. A horrible guilt was building now; his wife’s ordeal driving it home. “Intrusion?”
“It was like a shotgun blast, interrupting meditation and conversations with myself, trying desperately to break free of random, disconnected thoughts to reel them in and get something cognitive and rational going; something that had a flow and sense to it, while over time – over a lot of goddamn time – something pretty fucking clear came across to me in that little room.”
“And what was that?”
She bent near, whispering. “You were cheating.”
Ferg exhaled slowly, and Janelle inhaled to continue. “Medical experts told you how my chances for recovery were a million to one; that I was sliding away into dangerous dementia and incurable behavior, so it was perfectly understandable and inspirational for recovery, knowing that my husband was going to move on and that my little girl would live her life without me, eventually seeking comfort in the arms of a surrogate mother, all of this driving me hard for what I had to do.”
Ferg slowly reached up, running his hand through Janelle’s flaxen hair as tears fell to join his own, now coursing down the sides of his contorted face, lips pulled back in a tortured, frozen grimace.
“I had to sweat,” Janelle said.
Ferg stared up to her dark face. “Sweat?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Like . . . perspire?”
She was nodding, brushing the tears away. “Like a ten dollar Mexico City whore.”
They both started breaking from the torturous truth then, nodding and laughing through the sadness, as Janelle continued. “At first it was just isometrics against padding because of the straight jacket, with a lot of deep knee bends and squat-thrusts – stretching and yoga – but as people started noticing during camera surveillance, a couple of deals were struck with randy orderlies, and my jacket was taken off.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Randy as in . . .”
“YouTube.”
Ferg exhaled. “Have you seen my little laptop?”
“Not now dear; I’m on a roll.”
“Go.”
“So a deal was struck, and I was prancing for all the world to see, using that canvas jacket as another tool for isometrics, sweating the chemical out – which really wasn’t a chemical by then, but close enough – and starting to see things clearly.
“But even as sanity slowly returned, powerful feelings of vengeance and anger started to grow so that it went on and on and on, taking one new level at a time, my inner self rising to the surface of a very polluted and toxic lake.”
“Damn.”
“And of course, there was the old Boston Bruins.”
Ferg shook his head at another brutal switchback.
“I remembered you playing the senior league with my brothers; all of you guys drinking beers later and watching the old Boston Bruins tapes as I tried to study, then joining you later to wonder what it was all about. I remembered the history and development, until those incredible years with Orr and Cashman and Cheevers . . .”
She cleared her throat. “Jesus saves; Esposito scores on the rebound.”
“Who could forget?”
“So I clung to these simple memories dangling like a rope into Hades, climbing and climbing upward to more recognizable patterns and other memories, falling back to the old Bruins when things became distorted, but soon it all started flowing into some kind of crazy sense. Soon I had more platforms to ascend, and present reality came slowly into view.
“When I was absolutely, positively certain that sanity was finally coming back, I also knew that patience was quickly disappearing, and that trust between the hospital staff and myself had eroded into dangerous territory. I had to take complete control of their situation.”
Ferg was transfixed and listening to every word now; ready to cry again for the bravery of this woman he had loved so much and was loving now, more than ever.
Janelle whispered in his ear. “Was she good?”
The change-up question froze Fergus as she giggled, rolling off to look up into darkness, letting the question slam through her husband’s consciousness like an angry hornet, then feeling his weight shift to prop up on one elbow, facing her way.
“That was interesting,” he said, “how you dropped the infidelity question again, after talking about your own experience at the infirmary.”
“Yes,” Janelle said, breathing hard. “Thanks.”
“And you seem really, really happy.”
“I’m ecstatic.”
“And that would be because . . ?”
“It’s a reverse set-up question that would normally be used to start gaining control, but now is used in order for me to lose control.”
“Control of what?”
“A converted transference caused by jealousy and anger. Would the word homicidal be overly problematic?”
“In a way.”
“I really have to know about your infidelity, for me to trust you and for you to trust me, after watching my naked performance while trying to make deals with a bunch of underpaid zookeepers.”
Ferg settled down on the bed with a great gush of air, gathering his thoughts. “Could you really fry my brain?”
She giggled.
“Janelle . . . honey? The giggling really scares me now.”
She broke into laughter, shaking her head to roll on top of him and sit, reminding Ferg of a position Candy had just recently taken.
And he told her everything, starting with a couple of drunken visits to Perpetual Motion around the holidays, to a happy ending massage down in New London, finally wrapping things up with his recent adventures involving Miss Candas Kane, the post grad mafia princess. He told her the entire Bonnie and Clyde fiasco, explaining how their strip joint episode ended, with Frenchy’s brand new wife and self-adopted brothers.
“My turn,” said Janelle, and they were at the laptop in no time, Ferg watching intensely as a very naked-from-the-neck-down black and white Janelle danced about the padded room, wearing her straightjacket as a kind of flowing Muslim Hijab, with one sleeve pulled tightly over her mouth.
“Love the Wayfarers,” Ferg said, enlarging the image on his screen. “It could really be any super hot, athletic looking crazy person in a rubber room.”
“Indeed; and when the goons thought they were having sex with me? They never laid a hand.”
“Come again?”
“They did, but only with themselves.”
“No.”
“Oh yes . . . once I got into their heads, it was look but no touch, unless operating their very own tools.”
“I know a guy from work who would love that job.”
“Once they operated each other’s tools.”
“I’ll e-mail him the address right away.”
“Don’t wanna know.”
“So in essence, you gave them a faceless body, with the feeling of only themselves.”
“That’s deep for you.”
“I’ve been reading Rhiannon’s textbooks.”
“I see.”
“Candy is over,” Ferg said. “Dead and gone forever.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Questions, my love.”
“This is where you cook my brain.”
Janelle smiled. “Not yet. My only concern is, you weren’t even a day out of work, robbing the cradle of a wild girl and bringing our kid around that.”
“We have Guardian Fiona.”
“Who – by the way – kept this secret very well.”
“For now, and Rhiannon would’ve let something slip; guaranteed.”
“Hmmm . . .”
Janelle pushed away from the desk and stood, Ferg watching his wife’s lissome body stretch and glide away, breaking into perfect ballet spins before slowly returning cat-like, crouching before him like a Saigon street vendor, watching Ferg’s angular, shadowed face.
“I want to know everything about this woman.”
Ferg turned to see the paused image of his wife in a padded cell, dancing for a chance to make deals, knowing there would be other images somewhere because these kinds of people always had backup plans, thinking how she might be affected by such a twisted ordeal.
“You have every right,” he said, turning back. “You can do whatever you want with this situation.”
“Bingo,” Janelle said. “That’s the million dollar answer, because it’s not about the girl or what took place between you, it’s about how we both feel and how we’re going to feel now, with my sudden escape from the dungeons of padded hell.”
“Ah.”
“Ah.
“Eee.”
“Ohhhhh,” Janelle said, rising to carefully straddle Ferg’s lap, reaching to close the paused image of herself in another time and place. “Enough voyeurism. I just want to hold you tight for like . . . ever.”
She bent forward, and they kissed for a very long time.
To be continued . . .