Breaking Out of Bedlam Read online

  ALSO BY LESLIE LARSON

  Slipstream

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Leslie Larson

  Reading Group Guide copyright © 2011 by Leslie Larson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.​crownpublishing.​com

  Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2010.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-307-46077-6

  eISBN 978-0-307-46078-3

  v3.1_r2

  For the Marshes

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  First Book

  Chapter 1 - The Blank Book

  Chapter 2 - The Kidnapping

  Chapter 3 - My So-Called Home

  Chapter 4 - Poison Ivy

  Chapter 5 - The Springs

  Chapter 6 - The Quarters

  Chapter 7 - Vitus and the Cigarettes

  Chapter 8 - Glenda Comes Calling

  Chapter 9 - An Evening Smoke

  Chapter 10 - Marcos

  Chapter 11 - Gone!!!

  Chapter 12 - Edward

  Chapter 13 - The Empty Envelope

  Chapter 14 - Treats

  Chapter 15 - Alone Again

  Chapter 16 - The Beginning of the End

  Chapter 17 - To Hell and Back

  Chapter 18 - Love

  Second Book

  Chapter 19 - I Spill the Beans

  Chapter 20 - Losing

  Chapter 21 - The Fountain Pen

  Chapter 22 - The List

  Chapter 23 - My Predicament

  Chapter 24 - Rumors

  Chapter 25 - Pie

  Chapter 26 - The Fall

  Chapter 27 - A Way Out

  Chapter 28 - Rassling

  Chapter 29 - The Culprit

  Chapter 30 - Weighing In

  Third Book

  Chapter 31 - The Comet

  Chapter 32 - The Hero

  Chapter 33 - The Proposal

  Chapter 34 - No More Pussyfooting

  Chapter 35 - Brown Ink

  Chapter 36 - Alice

  Chapter 37 - The Ghost

  Chapter 38 - Paperwork

  Chapter 39 - The Interrogation

  Chapter 40 - The Word

  Chapter 41 - The Necklace

  Chapter 42 - Questions

  Chapter 43 - Thanksgiving

  Chapter 44 - The Ring

  Chapter 45 - The Truth

  Chapter 46 - The Path

  Chapter 47 - The Key

  Chapter 48 - The Hole

  Chapter 49 - The Emerald

  Chapter 50 - The Empty Bed

  Chapter 51 - My Prayer

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  THE BLANK BOOK

  I got this book from my granddaughter Emma. The cover looks like a gunnysack. It has a dried purple flower on the front, and all the pages are blank. It’s supposed to be pretty. The purple pen that goes with it is squishy, like chewed-up gum. “So it doesn’t hurt your hand, Gamma,” Emma said. I laughed, thinking where my hand has been these eighty-two years, and what it’s done. I was polite, though, and asked her real nice what in the world I’m supposed to do with it. “It’s for your thoughts,” she said. “If you have any memories or reflections you want to write down. Or a poem, maybe, or a sentiment you think is meaningful.”

  That girl has always worked my last nerve.

  They all feel guilty for putting me here, so they’re trying to keep me from losing my mind. I also got a jigsaw puzzle (one of the biggest wastes of time I can think of) and an embroidery set (which I have always hated) for Christmas. My son Dean even gave me a paint-by-numbers kit with three kinds of dogs: a poodle, a collie, and a German shepherd. Do they think I am retarded? That I’ve gone back to my childhood?

  They don’t know the first thing about me.

  I put those other gifts down in the Day Room and they got snapped up like nobody’s business. I tucked this book in my top drawer thinking I could tear the pages out if I needed some blank paper. It’s thick as a damn Bible. I don’t know who in their right mind could ever fill it. Then this morning I got up early, when the light was just starting to come through the blinds. Usually my pills knock me out ‘til breakfast, when the walkers and wheelchairs make a slow-motion stampede for the dining room. But this morning was quiet. Nobody calling out from their bed, or knocking a mop around. The phones at the nurses’ station weren’t ringing yet, the gardeners weren’t running their leaf blowers, and the delivery trucks weren’t idling outside my window.

  This morning I sat straight up in bed like somebody called my name. Lots of times I can’t get out of bed at all. I stay there all day, dozing and waking up, dozing and waking up. I might swallow a few more of my little darlings to settle my nerves. Sometimes whole chunks of the day disappear. Fine by me. But today I woke clear as a bell. I did my bathroom business, sat down here at my dressing table, and started to write.

  I got a plan. I’m going to write down everything I ever wanted to say. I’m not holding nothing back and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks. Most people don’t tell the truth about their lives, including me. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I lied to keep myself alive because life is hard and there’s things you got to do. But now I got nothing to lose. I’m going to tell the truth, once and for all. I hope those that put me in this place read it when I’m dead—which I have a feeling won’t be long. Maybe then they’ll see.

  The trucks are starting to idle outside now, spitting fumes right into my window. And the inmates are creeping down the hall, yelping like animals fighting to get to the watering hole. Damned if I’m not hungry myself. Those rubbery eggs don’t sound half bad.

  I got another reason for keeping this book. It’s called leaving a paper trail. Something fishy’s going on in this place and I want a record in case anything happens to me. That’s right. There’s whispering, and shifty looks, and things gone missing.

  It’s all going down here.

  I’m using the purple pen.

  I’ve always had the prettiest handwriting.

  THE KIDNAPPING

  They put me here about three months ago, just after Thanksgiving. By they I mean my family, my two sons and my daughter, along with their wives and husband. If you’re reading this, you know who I mean.

  My girl, Glenda, is the ringleader, the one who started it. She
came out to the house when I was not having a good day. It was getting to be winter. The days were drawing in and all of a sudden it seemed to be dark all the time. I don’t know what time she came. After lunch, I think, but I was still in bed. So what? She acted real funny, asking questions that were none of her business. I know she was snooping around, pretending to use the bathroom and staying in there a long time. Opening cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. Can you imagine? She went home and called the boys, Dean and Kenneth, and word spread like wildfire. Within days the whole posse, including my daughters-in-law, swooped down, poking and prying into every nook and cranny.

  I knew what they were up to, but I just sat in my chair, watched my program, and didn’t say a word. Dean took Glenda into the kitchen and showed her that spot by the stove that caught fire when the grease in the skillet got too hot, then Glenda dragged him into the bathroom to point to where the ceiling was leaking. It dripped right into the tub and I call that lucky and not a problem. They got in my pantry and pulled out food I’d been saving for a rainy day. They went through the icebox, holding their noses, gagging, and making the biggest fuss over a few little things that had spoiled. They had something to say about the newspapers I’d been saving in a corner of the living room, the clothes in my drawers (which aren’t exactly new, but it’s not like I’m going out to the opera every night), and the drain in the kitchen sink which was plugged so I couldn’t do dishes in there (but the bathtub worked just fine; you’d be surprised). They even had a tizzy about the ring on the ceiling over my chair from me smoking while I watched TV or read. Big deal. It’s nothing a coat of paint won’t cure.

  You never saw such gasping and groaning and oh-my-goshing in your life. Every so often they’d come back to the living room carrying a bag of Fritos or those marshmallow peanuts I like so much or a tub of ice cream and hold it up like they just found a dead body. “You are borderline diabetic, Mommy. You have high blood pressure!” they squawked. Like I didn’t know. Well, I’ve always loved salty things—olives, pretzels, salami, potato chips, and cheese curls. But I’m not supposed to have any of that, just like I’m not supposed to have any sugar. Or fat. What’s left? Nothing I’d want to eat.

  They went on and on. When did I last change my clothes? What did I have for breakfast? How did I take a bath with those dishes in the tub? I just shrugged. I wasn’t having a very good day that day, either, to tell the truth. All that commotion mixed me up. So I just stared at the screen and acted like they weren’t there. I knew it was no use explaining that when you get older certain things don’t matter so much—like if you wear the same clothes all the time, or if you have your meals at a certain hour, or whether every little corner is spic and span.

  The shit really hit the fan when they started rounding up my pills. Dean’s wife found some in the sugar bowl, then Glenda found some behind the pillowcases in the hall closet. Kenny’s wife found the ones I kept in the junk drawer with the matches and keys. It was like a goddamn Easter egg hunt, seeing who could get the most. They cleaned out the medicine cabinet and my bedside stand. They brought them all into the living room and piled them on the coffee table.

  I didn’t let on, but even I was surprised to see so many.

  I have pills for my blood pressure, plus blood thinners, cholesterol reducers, and heart regulators. I got what my doctor calls mood elevators, a few different kinds of sleeping pills, and muscle relaxers for when my back goes out or I get those charley horses in my legs at night. I been taking Valium since I went through the change thirty years ago. I got pain pills for my arthritis, which aches me all the time, plus leftovers from when I had my teeth out, gallbladder surgery, my hysterectomy, and that time I fell on the back steps and bruised my ribs. For a while I was having dizzy spells whenever I went outside and I got real nervous around more than a few people, so I got a pill for that, too.

  I’d lost track of a lot of those pills I saw piled in front of me, but I do know I worked hard to get them, going around to different doctors and scraping and bowing and acting innocent—and I couldn’t bear to see them taken away from me.

  “Mommy, you’re hooked!” Glenda hollered. She has always been an exaggerator.

  “Each and every one of those pills is from a doctor,” I told her. “Fair and square. Legal as can be.” The thought that they’d take them away scared the life out of me.

  I knew something bad was coming, I just didn’t know what. Dean stood there like Mr. Clean with his feet wide apart and his arms crossed over his chest. He’s been playing the Big Man since he was four years old. Glenda’s mouth hung open and her eyes were big as saucers. Kenneth, my baby—well, he couldn’t even look at me. And my daughters-in-law! Holy Christ on earth! They clucked and scratched like hens.

  My mistake was thinking an adult could make her own decisions. Thinking I was still an American citizen with rights that couldn’t be taken away.

  Good riddance, I said to my dog Lulu when the door closed and we were on our own again. To hell with them. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. I had a few pills left in places they didn’t think of looking. Little did I know they were plotting, that the whole thing was one big conspiracy. They put their heads together and they made plans. They talked to lawyers and looked at places to put me. They got everything in order.

  I was the last one to know.

  MY SO-CALLED HOME

  This place is called The Palisades and to this day I don’t know what that means or who thought it up. I just hope whoever it is ends up in a shithole like this. Then maybe he’ll come up with a better name, like Snake Pit, or Hell Hole, or Lock ‘em Up and Throw Away the Key. The part I’m in is called assisted living, which means you’re supposed to do things for yourself. They tried to tell me it was just like an apartment of my own, only with maid service. Even they can’t believe I’m that dumb.

  Besides Assisted Care, there’s Full Care, called B Wing, where the droolers, pissers, and moaners live. They sit in wheelchairs all day with their heads lolled back and their eyes crossed. I’m in A Wing, I’m glad to say. Some people cross over. It’s a sad thing when someone says, “Did you hear Joe Blow got moved over there to B?”

  I’d rather be carried out in a coffin.

  If you saw this place from the outside, you’d never know what goes on behind these walls. It don’t look like much, just a low U-shaped building painted grayish blue. It’s made of cinder blocks, like a cement igloo, more like a garage or a warehouse than a place for people to live. It’s not like a wood house, that you can smell and feel around you, swaying and creaking. No. It’s stiff and dry, a bunch of sand hardened into place.

  There’s a parking lot out front and the usual plants, oleander and those ugly acacia trees that make me sneeze. When I first moved to San Diego there was nothing but marsh and scrub around here, with a few farms where the Japanese raised strawberries. Then they built the Navy base, and the strip joints where the sailors went. Now it’s all built up with Wal-Mart and Denny’s and Smart & Final—those giant buildings you can’t tell apart.

  People in this place scream all hours of the day and night, calling out for folks who’ve been dead for fifty years. It’s just like a prison or a lunatic asylum. I got no more rights than if I took a gun and blew somebody’s head off. And while I sit here in this ugly little cell, some strangers are living in my house (a nice family they tell me), shitting in my toilet, and waking up looking out my window at my little yard. While I’m getting slopped like a hog in a room full of people who don’t know their own names, someone is cooking on my stove, and sitting themselves down at my dinner table, then washing up the dishes in the sink I scoured with Ajax so it would stay pretty and white. I keep asking myself what I done to deserve this, but no matter how hard I think, I can’t come up with an answer.

  There’s a piss smell in here that drives me crazy.

  They say I’m lucky I got a corner room all to myself, but once you’re inside it don’t ma
ke a damn bit of difference. It’s oblong, with a bed, a stand next to it, a dressing table, an armchair, and a TV. That’s it. My bathroom’s the size of a closet. You feel all the people that’s been in this room before, people you don’t know and wouldn’t want to. People who cried and were sick here; people who, God knows, must have died here—all alone more likely than not, abandoned and forgotten.

  There’s a sliding glass door that opens onto a courtyard. I can watch the girls pushing big carts of dirty laundry and cleaning supplies, or the dishwasher pushing racks of dirty dishes. Old ladies are wheeled along or plod like zombies. Once I saw an old man open his fly and spray a fountain of piss on a geranium. There’s a window high up by the ceiling that runs the length of my bed. The only way I can see out of it is to stand beside the bed on my tiptoes with my chin on the windowsill. There’s a loading dock outside. I watch the men spit, smoke, and chew the fat while they work. The big Dumpsters are just beyond it. Twice now I’ve seen a man with hair like a buffalo eat trash out of the Dumpster like it was peach cobbler.

  And who knows what all with things disappearing right and left, people creeping around and doing God-knows-what. All this, and they say I wasn’t safe at home.

  POISON IVY

  There’s someone here I hate more than the devil himself. I didn’t like her the minute I laid eyes on her, but now it’s all I can do not to put my hands around that buzzard neck of hers and strangle her to death. She accused me of something I got nothing to do with. Right in front of other people, she looked me in the eye and accused me. I’m so mad I can’t see straight. I can hardly write, but I got to get to the bottom of this. I got to show that I’m innocent as a lamb.

  Her name’s Ivy, Ivy Archer. Poison Ivy, I call her. But first I got to explain.

  We eat at a bunch of little round tables in the dining room, four people to a table. You get no choice or say. You are assigned a table the day you come, and as far as I can tell, the only way you get to change your seat is by dying. I really got lucky. I hit the jackpot. Each and every one of the people at my table is the last person on earth you’d ever want to see shove food in their face.