Part 25 (1/2)

Pahtbulb

Sold it to you it to you

For cigarettes She sold Betty the lighter We all do it, Mary I've done it for years

It's ato kill ourselves I even use betadyne to be sure it's clean

But Betty could wind up getting shock therapy again Y'all could wind up staying here a long damn time

I like it here, she says I find it restful

She stands up and slides her finger into the change slot, checking for left coins, as she says, Do you fancy a bedtie healthy sleep

With , Or maybe a cup of that herb tea Chamomile eases internal inflammation, also redness in the face

You could wind up in the Monkey House, Tina, I say (That's e call the more restrictive ward) Or medicated into oblivion like Flora

In the kitchen, she flips on the fluorescent light-a blinking hum She says, Everybody has to work out their own shi+t Isn't that what your et the sentences to speak to her Maybe honest care for her just infectedyour h the freezer for ice, Tina says, How htbulb?

I' with a container of yogurt She adds, The lightbulb has to want to change

I mean it It's like e off, I never got any better coping skills

Like what?

Making a cup of tea Going to the gy tea over ice that crackles in its plastic glass She turns to me and says, What if none of your pals are ho pal? What if you're a boy trapped in a girl's body and the kids at your school call you pussyeater and Butch and muffdiver?

You tell yourself they're shi+theels and find somebody lonelier than you to be nice to

What if there's nobody lonelier than you? she says She turns away to shi+eld her face

I' in the chasurt-with the force of a ue pitcher-into the trash can so it splatters up the sides She stalks out, hitting the light switch on the way

The nextflaible tongue I step from my room into the faint odor of eucalyptus The aroet close to the dayroom A nurse brushes past me, her ar past her, I see dozens of wreaths of every kind They fill the chairs where residents usually hang out The nurses are stacking them on a dolly the custodians would (with bemused faces) wheel onto the service elevator

Off to one side, Pa paddle, occasionally bouncing the ball on it She says, You missed the shon

It turns out Tina planted in Betty the hope that-with her extraordinary talent for floral arrange wreaths Betty could be free fro So for weeks they've been ginning out an extra wreath here and there, squirreling them away in the art room

But in the sotten larger and larger-visits on Oprah Oprah and and Johnny Carson Johnny Carson are involved are involved

After she storht before, she convinced Betty to break into the art roo Flora and willy to chip in, like stockholders At dawn, the day nurses found wreaths by the stack Even willy made one out of doll's heads painted blue with tempera paint

A nurse passes by with more wreaths I ask Pa the latest in four-point restraints up in the Monkey House Her insurance has run out anyway, so the one anyhow Flora's in the safe room willy's hty Tina She executed so moves, Pam says

On the nurses?

Just the orderlies I actually don't think she made contact with anybody I ca side kick Very Bruce Lee Then later, she went bye-bye on the gurney

We stand in silence outside the barren dayroo their tormented faces-Tina's and Betty's, Flora's and willy's-arrayed before me like plucked blossoms

The prayer's auto-so whatever light I' to believe in to shi+ne on them Give Betty a bite to eat, and free Will's face of sores Chase the de arms Whether you believe prayers like this affect external affairs doesn't matter They measure the overhaul in my psyche and character

Ti nurse says

Pa time in that eucalyptus odor, which conjures up so many sickrooh a scrim of fever, and my mother's white hands shts he choked for air in the vaporizer fog; Daddy's before he died

It's unhip to fall to your knees, sentimental, stupid, even But somehow I've started to do it unself-consciously

Behind a door, my body bends, and the linoleum rises I lay my face on my knees in a posture almost fetal It is, skeptics may say, the move of a slave or brainless herd aniine it-spirit Such vast quiet holdsup just dissolves like ash in water Just isn't In its place is this clean air

There's a space at the botto out that's a perfect zero you can go into There's a rest point between the heartwhen you'repasses? Soroup

I creak tolucky-which I lory days with Warren-lucky for ers who've carriedtown, and Deb and Liz and Janice come every day Most ofbuddies-not at all Even Joe, who's landed back in the joint on an old car-theft charge, sendsstaiventhat day, I setit The prayer-which Jack of the Tinfoil Hel-now rivers through, sometimes dozens of times a day: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let ainst the phrase ”O Divine Master” and the last two lines about eternal life, which I thought were horseshi+t

O Divine Master, ask that I not so much seekto be consoled as to console;to be understood as to understand;to be loved as to loveFor it is in giving that we receiveIt is in pardoning that we are pardoned,and it is in dying to self that we are rebornto eternal life