As a patient of the Green Ward I was regularly taken to a conference room full of doctors, who questioned me. During one of these sessions I completely lost my cool and I screamed at them and slammed my hands into the smooth reflective surface of the brown table again and again and again.
SLAM!
SLAM!
SLAM!
SLAM!
I would be sobbing during all of this which they noted.
I PICKED HER up at her house and she bounced out like a kid on their way to Disneyland. She jumped into the car, banged the door shut and gave another little squeal before pulling me toward her into a tight hug. When she pushed back I could see her face – her real face, her true mask – for the first time since the hospital.
The first thing I noticed was that the makeup job she’d done in the Green Ward was nothing but a whisper of the whole works that screamed across her skull that night. Her ghostly pale skin was blotted with blood lips and blackened eyes. Her lashes so long and thick I immediately thought of Venus Flytraps every time she batted them open and closed. Her hair had been sorta puffed-out, blow-dried to enhance the body of the bleach-white cornucopia that lifted up from her forehead and bowed away and down the back of her neck. She wore jeans that glittered and looked sprayed-on to her stick-thin legs and an equally tight black T-shirt. I checked her feet and saw bright red heels, three inches high at a minimum. I almost felt underdressed, even if we were just going to a sports bar near her house to watch the Kings game (she was a rabid hockey fan, if that helps complete the picture here), but she assured me I looked “darling.”
I smiled sickly and tried not to recoil when I noticed that, astonishingly, she’d had another surgery done in the couple weeks since I’d last seen her. Her big brown eyes were still as glorious as ever and glowing with that bright inner-light, but now one seemed, uh, lower than the other. I stared at her flesh, tried to understand what had been done and why. It was not unlike attempting to solve an unfinished puzzle, not unlike the ones I did in the cafeteria of Green Ward to pass the time, to ease my anxiety.
She kissed my cheek and the spell was broken. While I drove us to the bar she put a cold hand over mine, and a shudder went through me at the skeletal feel of her clutching fingers, the chilled pad of her palm. But amidst all that revulsion huddled a satisfied pleasure. An elation. Despite it all – and as insane and poorly constructed as this idea was and as mildly deranged and physically unsettling as Crystal appeared to be – I was happy.
I’d made a friend.
3
I DON’T KNOW how or why the sleepovers started.
The first one occurred a couple weeks into our new friendship. We’d been hanging out a few nights a week, neither of us having jobs and both of us in need of companionship. One of those nights, after a movie I think, she asked me in for a drink. I accepted, and we hung out in her living room watching television and splitting a pitcher of margaritas she’d…
No. Wait.
That was the night I met her mother.
It was her mother who made the margaritas. The mother is important, so keep her in mind as we go. If it helps, I’ll tell you that there was nothing extraordinary about her. She was smallish and drab. Wispy. Borderline translucent. I’d wager you could spend hours in the same room with her and never even know she was there. Mrs. Cellophane, you know? Her wardrobe consisted of gray knit sweaters, generic black slacks, tired sneakers. She wore little or no makeup and was always extremely happy to see me. You’d think, knowing full well where her daughter and I had met, that she might be cautious. Wary. But she embraced me that first night, insisted I take off my shoes and get comfortable. She suggested we take the couch, Crystal and I, and then offered to make the margaritas.
While Crystal and I shoulder-snuggled on the puffy leather couch, a position I was quite familiar with from our mental hospital days, her mother made the drinks. She brought out glasses, crackers and bland cheese. A perspiring pitcher. She handed Crystal the remote control and said, “I’ll be in my room. You two have fun.” Adding: “I won’t be able to hear anything.”
Crystal had giggled and dug her shoulder playfully into mine, like a hairless cat burrowing in for a comfortable spot on a quilt. I found the whole thing a little strange, and having the pale-skinned, misshapen girl rubbing against me did nothing to assuage the feeling of discomfort. If anything, the creepiness of the situation enhanced. I felt as if the older woman not only expected us to fool around while watching the late-night talk shows, but was endorsing the idea.
But since I had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go (the idea of drowning in the dark thoughts waiting at my apartment was terrifying), and no one else to hang out with, I convinced myself that this was all very nice, and that her mother was very nice, and that Crystal herself was extremely nice. Nothing to see here, folks. We’re all good.
Or so I thought. Or so I hoped.
Like I said, when you’re a depressive you’ll close your eyes to almost anything if it means a little bit of comfort. A touch of human warmth. A shred of joy. So, I stayed over that night. We slept together on the wide, soft couch. No, not sex, although I think she wanted to do… something. But the idea of touching her in that way was too much. The thought of being fully exposed, flesh on flesh. Repulsive. Instead, we cuddled fully-dressed and let ourselves sink into sleep and the psychotic’s dark realm of troubled dreams, our heads thick with anti-depressants and tequila, with only a late-night comedian’s monologue to escort us.
FROM THERE IT became a sort of ritual.
Every time we went out, or nearly so, we’d end up on the couch watching television, drinking ourselves into submission, an unspoken agreement between us that I would inevitably stay.
But, man, if the evenings were odd, the mornings were downright bizarre.
I’d wake, open my eyes, and see her brown eyes staring back at me. Focused. As if willing me to wake up, to sense her heightened awareness of me and miraculously become alert to the strength of her desire.
I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. Usually her hair would be matted, the straw-like fiber knotted or smooshed against her head by whatever product she’d pumped it full of the night before. Her face was puffy in the mornings, pale and lined, facial powder crusted in the creases. Her lashes, more often than not, were clumped and gluey. One morning I couldn’t help but stare into an eye that was half shut, the right-side of the eye’s lashes clinging to each other in desperation, a mock bridge keeping the thin flesh of the lid sealed in a sloppy, perpetual wink.
