Mosquitoland (13 page)

The Mistress of Moxie

September 3—midmorning

Dear Isabel,

Dim the lights.

Raise the curtains.

Cue the amped-up, percussive spy music. (Film noir, not Bond.)

Standing in the shadows of trees, rooftop pools, and fat, drunken slobs, Our Heroine comes face-to-face with a different kind of shadow: her arch nemesis, Shadow Kid (duhn-duhn-duuuuh!!!!). Shadow Kid tests Our Heroine's theory that heroes are not without blemish, villains not without virtue.
If Shadow Kid holds a single ounce of virtue in his heart,
thinks Our Heroine,
it is kept well hidden
.
It isn't the first time her theory has been put to test, and it won't be the last.

With more than a little help from her sidekicks, Our Heroine escapes the clutches of Shadow Kid unscathed, unfettered, and unmurdered. Much to her chagrin, however, she now must deal with the inept Constable Randy, and though Our Heroine has done nothing wrong . . .

Okay, cut, cut, cut.

Sorry, Iz—I had every intention of keeping up the cloak-and-dagger-Bogart-forties-black-and-white bullshit, but honestly, I just don't have it in me. I'm too hungry. And pissed. I'm hungry and pissed, and I'm sure you understand.

So.

Northern Kentucky seems to be experiencing a substance and despair monsoon.

How do I know this?

Well, right now I'm sitting in an interrogation room at the Independence police station. I'm not under arrest or anything, but apparently little things like constitutional rights don't matter here in Independence. (I know. The irony. I just . . . I can't.)

Anyway, it appears I have some time on my hands, so let's talk Reasons.

Reason #7 ends with a pill, and begins with a grizzly bear.

GRIZZLY BEAR

(Feared, Murdered, Stuffed, Admired)

Ferocious? Yep.

Out of place? Bingo.

Key ingredient to the world's most awesome doctor's office waiting room? You bet your sweet ass.

I still remember my first visit to Dr. Makundi's office like it was yesterday. The waiting room had toys for the kids and magazines for the parents, but it also had
that
life-sized, stuffed grizzly. For everyone.

On the first of what would turn out to be just under a hundred visits to Dr. Makundi's office, I walked right up to that giant brown grizzly and touched its claw. I was eleven at the time, and it was a bear, so really, I had no choice. (I mean. It was a bear. A
bear
.) So I stood there, cowering in its ever-still shadow, staring into those great glassy eyes, positive the thing would come alive at any moment and swallow me whole. I recalled one of my favorite childhood stories,
Pierre
by Maurice Sendak, about a lion who swallowed a naughty boy named Pierre. (Have you read this book? My God, it is deliciously macabre!) Anyway, as I was quite a naughty child, I was sure the bear would turn out to be just like that lion, which is to say, I was sure he would swallow me whole.

But he did not.

“Mim,” said my father, waving me over.

Clearly, Dad had no respect for murdered/stuffed bears. Reluctantly, I pulled myself away from the terrifying taxidermy and sat in the chair between Mom and Dad.

“You're okay with being here, right?” said Dad.

I nodded. There was, after all, a bear.

Mom put her arm around me. “If you're uncomfortable with any of Dr. Makundi's questions, just say the word, okay? We can leave whenever you want.”

Dad, thinking I couldn't see him, rolled his eyes. (This eye roll, combined with a textbook nostril flare, would become his trademark, a look that would haunt me well into my teen years.) “It might be tough sometimes,” he said. “But
you're
tough, right? My tough girl. You'll answer whatever the doctor asks, won't you tough girl?”

I nodded, because whatever, there was a fucking
bear
right
there.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase here, Iz, as a slew of doctor visits doesn't exactly make for stimulating reading. Dr. Makundi, as it turned out, was more than a decent doctor. He was a decent man. He was short and round and always wore a bow tie. He was the only East Indian I've ever encountered who had red hair. Like,
Weasley
red. In fact, he used to joke that he was Irish-in-hiding. (
“My name is even camouflaged . . . MAC-oondi,”
he'd say. And then laugh, effing
heartily.
) He let me talk when I needed to talk, and he talked when I needed to listen. He even played Elvis in the background without my having to ask. Over the next four years, Makundi and I took our time “getting to the root,” as he called it. His methods went like this: wait, talk, think, watch, listen. Sitting with him required patience and a certain bold individuality. I had plenty of both, so it worked. Makundi had his own practice, which I know doesn't really say much these days, but he really did it up old-school. He wasn't tied down to any one notion of popular treatment, or pulled hither and thither by powerful drug companies. He played games and told stories because as he put it, “Life is more fictional than fiction.” He did things his way. And that was good enough for me. And that was good enough for Mom.

Dad was unconvinced.

It started with a smart man named Schneider who wrote a smart book, which helped a lot of people. Dad read this book and joined the ranks. Now, joining the ranks can be a good thing. (Take NATO, for example. Or cage-free eggs.) But joining the ranks can also be a not-so-good thing. (Take the Nazi Party for example. Or the rise of the McNugget.) Dad bought into the notion that there was One Right Way to solve a problem. Or rather, to solve
my
problem. And guess who wasn't solving my problem correctly? (Hint: he owned a bear.)

At the beginning of what turned out to be our final session—before Dr. Makundi even had a chance to get to the branch, much less the root—Dad stepped in. “We need to talk,” he said. And just like some angsty, one-sided breakup, my father explained to affable Dr. Makundi all the ways the good doctor had let us down.

. . . Schneider this and Schneider that . . .

. . . Makundi's methods, while commendable, simply weren't relevant in this day and age . . .

“What day and age is that, Mr. Malone?” asked Makundi.

“The day and age of new discoveries in the world of medicine,” answered my father.

Dr. Makundi sat on the other side of his rickety wooden desk, peering over the top of his glasses, listening to my father expound secondhand thoughts. I remember watching his face as Dad talked, thinking, in a way, the man was a product of his own theories, more fictional than fiction. Countless hours of sessions we'd spent focusing on the facts, trying to reconcile reality with whatever unreality was in my own head. But if Dr. Makundi, the Irish-Indian-bow-tie-wearing-grizzly-loving doctor himself had taught me anything, it was that our world could be astoundingly unrealistic.

The good doctor removed his glasses and spoke quietly. “
Symptoms
of psychosis, Mr. Malone, are not themselves psychoses. As I'm sure Schneider himself would agree, were he here today. Alas, he is not. Most of his work, as I'm sure you know, was published in the twenties.” He winked at me, looked back at my dad. “The day and age of new discoveries in the world of medicine, was it not?”

Two weeks later, I walked into a new doctor's office, one whose methods better fell in line with those of my father. One whose life had no fiction, no bow ties, no Elvis.

He didn't even have a bear.

(If I were writing a book, Iz, this would be my chapter break. I mean, right?
He didn't even have a bear.
Boom, muthafuckas.)

So . . . I'm sick. Supposedly. And Dad is worried. Obviously. I think he's afraid of history repeating itself in the worst way.

The reason I'm bringing all this up now is because I just spent the better part of the morning staring down the business end of a foot-long hunting knife, which in and of itself is terrifying. Only here's the thing—if I'm honest with myself, the knife wasn't what I was afraid of. I was afraid of the person holding the knife. Shadow Kid.

I don't know if you read comics, but if you do, you'll notice there usually isn't much that separates the villain from the hero. Lonely outcasts, masked identities, troubled childhoods, misunderstood by all—very often, there's a pivotal scene toward the end (usually during a massive thunderstorm) wherein the villain tries to convince the hero that they're the same.

This morning, Shadow Kid had me cornered, and all I could see were the great glassy eyes of a grizzly bear. Before long, the bear's eyes were my own, and I was convinced we were the same. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it sure felt like those thunderstorms from the comics.

But then something happened—standing there on that roof, I remembered once, years ago, when Dad took me mini-golfing. During a few of the earlier holes, I'd noticed a last-second flick of the wrist, or a fleeting smirk, which led me to believe he was putting forth less than his best effort. We were on the back half of the miniature course: the token “giant windmill” green. I don't remember who was winning at the time, but it was close. Closer than it should have been.

“Dad,” I said. “
Try
this time.”

Picking up his quarter, he raised an eyebrow. “
This time
? I've been trying every time, Mim. You're a pro.”

I was standing behind him when he teed off. His ball rolled down the turf aisle, a straight shot through the tiny tunnel, narrowly missing a windmill blade, and through to the other side. From where we were standing, the six-foot windmill blocked our view of the hole, making it impossible to see where Dad's ball had landed.

“Pretty sure I shanked it,” said Dad. “I'll go check.”

He rested his putter on his shoulder and strolled around the windmill, out of sight. While he was gone, I noticed the green ahead of us had one of those fold-out circus mirrors. Its position made it look as though there were six or seven holes, effectively camouflaging the true hole. A young couple kept hitting their golf balls into the mirror, cursing, then smiling like they didn't care. For a second, I tried to figure out which of the holes was the real one. And then I saw it. One side of the mirror was angled toward the hole on our green. In its reflection, I saw Dad pull his ball out of our hole, then set it down by the edge of the walkway, a good ten feet away. He threw on a smile, then rounded the windmill back on my side.

“Yup,” he said, shrugging. “Shanked it.”

Dad, for all his faults, was still Dad. He didn't just will himself to lose that game so that I might win—he rigged it so that there was no other way.

I had people. Who loved me. People who cheated to lose. There's really something to this, Iz, something that separates me from Shadow Kid. And I think this is what makes the storm pass.

People say I'm sick. Dad sure believes it. At his insistence, I've been on meds for the past year or so.

Shit.

Constable Randy returns.

Long story short, I'm not going to take the medication anymore, because I don't need it. Mom never thought so, and neither did Makundi.

Abilitol is its name.

And it is Reason #7.

Signing off,

Mary Iris Malone,
Grizzly Whoa-man!

“ARE YOU DONE?”

I nod, stuff my journal away, and give the officer my sarcastic-undivided-attention look. (It's a good one.) We aren't suspects—a fact I pointed out
twice
before he dropped us in this room—but this hasn't kept Independence's Finest from treating Walt and me like bottom-feeders.

“Okay, then,” says Officer Randy, plopping his awkward frame across the table. “What do you think a man in my position should do?”

I want to ask him what position he thinks he's in. Survey says:
bowling ball on a straw
. Seriously, in all my years I've never seen a noodle like his, like someone grabbed him by both feet and blew air into his toes. This man is one hard sneeze away from scoliosis.