The Unbalancing Act (11 page)

I wake up and have meds and breakfast, which is cereal and that makes me miss my kids. My kids do eat cereal. I totally lied to Dr. Lipton about that. He bought it. I call Eric and check on things. He is missing me and I can hear in his voice that the pressure of me not being there is tough on him. He’s only had to miss a day of work here and there since my mother is staying with them, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it is hard. Really, though, at least he has help.

“You feeling better baby? Any word on when you will be released?”

“Soon, kid. I have a couple things I still need to take care of here and then I will be home.”

“You take as long as you need. We just want you better. But what is it exactly that you have to take care of?”

“Oh...” I catch myself,  “Just a few more therapists want to check me for ligature marks and things.”

“Haha, very funny. You wanna talk to the boys?”

“Of course, I do!” I say.

A sweet little voice comes on the line; it’s Ben, “Hi, Mommy. Did you know that Lebron James is the best dunker in the NBA?”

“Oh really!” I say. “Did you know that you are the sweetest six year-old that I’ve ever known?”

“Mom, that was so nice. You are a princess. When are you coming home because Daddy doesn’t make my waffles right. They are too crunchy and...I...I...try to tell him but he just doesn’t listen, see, he’s not a good listener.”

“I know baby. He is not a good listener. I’ll talk to him about that okay? How’s everything at school?  Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, Mommy, I’m great except I just have trouble listening sometimes and I have to walk laps at recess. I think I’m like that because I get it from my dad. He’s not a good listener too. I think God should have made our ears bigger.”

“Your ears are just fine. Try your best okay?  Just do what your teacher says. I’ll be so proud of you!  Try to be the best listener in the whole wide world, like even better than the man with the biggest ears on the Earth!”

“Okay Mommy, Max wants to talk to you. Love you. Bye.”

Before I can even say anything, he hands the phone off and Max says, “Mommy!  Please come home because Ben told me is going to tape my butt cheeks together!”

“Max, he will not do that.”

“Yes he will, and then I won’t be able to go poop and I’ll have poop stuck in my butt for the rest of my life! What if it gets so full it comes out my nose?”

“Max, listen to me...I will tell Daddy to make sure that doesn’t happen. Okay?  Forget about it. How are you, baby?”

“Just great, Mommy. I’m just freaking great.”

Oh my, Max is just like me! “Max, don’t say freaking. Is school okay?”

“Yeah, but I’m getting sick of going every day. I think it’s freaking weird that it takes up the whole day!”

“Max, I said don’t say freaking. Well, honey, I love your face. I miss you and go kiss yourself for me, okay?”

“How am I supposed to do that? You are so crazy, Mommy.”

He’s right. “I love you buddy, now let me talk to Jordan.”

He hands the phone to Jordan and I catch a few “mamas” in there. He makes my heart melt. Then Eric takes back the phone.
 

“
Alright, VadieGirl. The kids all ran off and I need to go find them, but I love you and call me tonight before bed, okay?”

“Okay, love you too, kid. Hey, don’t let Ben tape Max’s butt cheeks together, okay? And quit making Ben’s waffles so crunchy.”

“Oh, I heard all about it. I won’t. You should have seen them earlier.  They played rock paper scissors to see who the biggest loser was. I played with them and I won.”

“Well, that seems pretty accurate, but you know that’s encouraging them to use words like “loser”. You shouldn’t fucking do that!”

“I know. Sorry baby.  Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”

Bring on the tears. I miss the smell of my laundry. I miss the smell of Eric when he gets out of the shower. I miss the smell of my babies’ sweet faces when they snuggle with me in the morning. But I know it won’t be long before I am home. This whole thing is turning out very different than I had planned, but it is what it is. I just have to go with it.

Looking over my quack schedule I have nothing until noon, which is a session with Dr. Ames. Yippee. I shower and slip on my yoga pants and a tank top in case I can get in on a yoga class with all my free time this morning. I leave my hair down today and wavy. Why not change it up a bit? Feeling good and relaxed from whatever benzo I got, I open my door and lo and behold, guess what I find? A note. Oh great, who’s on to me now?

      
-Vada Bower-

Jeremiah told me everything. But I forgive you. I wanted you to know that his loving arms held onto me like an Eskimo baby in a snow storm, so safe and so warm all through the night. And I want to thank you for not harming me. He told me about the blood and that he convinced you to let him have me. I knew you were in love with me the moment you looked at me. That day when I came out of the hot tub and I saw the way you lusted after my body, was painful to watch. I felt so sorry for you. I know it must have been hard to let me go to a man, especially as mentally ill as you are. Jeremiah told me that you wish I was fonder of you, but you are simply not my type. I’m not attracted to you. But I’d like to thank you for being unselfish. I’d still like to ask that you keep your distance. I wouldn’t want him to see you looking at me and get the wrong idea. Maybe once this blows over, we could be friends. Maybe not. We will see. But be warned, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.

Good day, Mary Weaverton

Well, isn’t that just great...just freaking great? So she thinks I’m in love with her. I will never give my pudding cup away again. Clearly, it sends the wrong message. At least I may get to be a bridesmaid. I must admit, I’m a little bruised on my ego that she’s not attracted to me. If I can’t even land Bath Salts Mary, I must be a real dog. Sheesh, I feel like I must be in a goddam looney bin.

I head off in search of a morning adventure. Actually, I head off in search of some peace and quiet. I could do the yoga but from the looks of the participants, I really don’t to be close to them if they are bending over. I’m just going to take a walk. The clouds are rolling in and I can smell the raindrops forming in the sky. It’s only a few sprinkles, and for some reason, it makes me want to keep walking. I head down a path and watch a mother duck and her five little ducklings hop into the lake. The mother looks incredibly nervous and her head is moving back and forth, and I believe she is doing a headcount. They stay close to their mother and this little gal reminds me very much of myself. She is freaking out, worrying about them. Out here, she has to protect her babies from the weather. She has to make sure they have enough to eat, and of course protect them from other animals. I begin to think that mother ducks are actually lucky. They don’t have the pressures we human mothers do. Yes, we have to keep them alive, but we also have to keep our babies safe from every possible evil in this world; child molesters, germs, bullies, senseless acts of violence, social media, media in general, wars, and every other terrifying thing that humans have to be afraid of. I wonder if the mother duck needs a Xanax. I imagine she made her home in this mental ward for a reason. I personally prefer these quacks over the ones inside.

The rain begins to fall harder. I say farewell to my new duck friends. Instead of walking back to the building, I walk further down the trail. The rain continues to fall. Big drops, not little ones and I am getting soaking wet. In true classic Vadie luck, the one day I leave my hair down and it actually looks cute, it gets soaking wet. I really don’t care. It feels so good not to care. There is no one I feel I need to impress. There is no one looking at me, judging how I am disciplining or not disciplining my children. I feel no guilt for not folding laundry or not unloading the dishwasher. I feel no pressure to be attending every function we are invited to and having to have something cute to wear to it. All I feel is this awesome spring rain. I look up to the sky and throw my hands up in the air. The rain feels like it is washing my guilt away, washing my pressure away, washing away the feelings that overwhelm me. I feel like this is the reason I am here, this is where I need to be right now in this moment...I think I am finding peace...

“Miss...excuse me...miss, umm...there is lightning in the area and we are under a severe thunderstorm warning, so I’m going to have to ask you to please come indoors immediately.” A scrawny male security guard with a black umbrella is hollering at me. “The outdoor area is being closed down until the warnings are lifted.”  I tell him to fuck off and then I beat him with the umbrella. Not really, I didn’t say or do that. But sonofabitch! Are you kidding me? I put my rejoicing arms back down by my side and walk all hunched over and pissed off back to the building, where I am now left with a rat’s nest of wet hair and coincidentally, no hair tie on my wrist.

After my one and only “zen” moment being interrupted by the storm and the weather cop, I go back to my room and change into dry clothes. I choose a snuggly KU sweatshirt and running shorts. I grab a hair tie and throw my hair up in a ball. I pick a book from the Social Room, a book about witches and wizards. I’m ordinarily not into those kinds of books, but today I just want to try something different. I take it to the Solarium and curl up with a cup of coffee. The storm is really beating down and I think about my boys. I know they are not afraid of storms, but I just hope they are safe. Sometimes I take them to the basement anyways “to play” just in case. Hey, when you live in the Midwest, tornadoes happen. I hope that Eric has them playing downstairs.

Reading with the sounds of rain is a relaxing experience and I’m sure that I may actually be enjoying myself. I look up and Lauren Sanders is walking past me. She sits on a bench in the bay window and looks out. Crap, it’s raining on her “birthday...”

I abandon my coffee and book and I slowly walk over to the bench, which is long enough for three people, so I just act like I came to watch the rain. I can see she is crying.

“Hey...um,” I say nervously, “My name is Vada.”

“Hello, I am Lauren.” She is wiping her eyes and trying to smile.

“I heard you talk last night in group and I just wanted to tell you, Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks, shithead,” she says and then looks back out the window.

Should I get up? Should I go back and read? Then she turns and looks at me and smiles. She actually looks pretty normal when she smiles. Her hair is chestnut brown and shoulder length. Up close, I can see she has freckles and is actually kind of cute. She has prominent laugh lines around her smile. She almost reminds me of a junior high schooler in an awkward phase, only she’s an adult and schizophrenic...really though, what’s the difference?

“Did you just say what I think you said?” she asks.

She looks at me bewildered and I don’t know if she’s going to start swinging at me or hug me. She stands up and says, “Come, follow me.”

She takes me down the long hallway, a separate wing from mine with much nicer carpet. It looks brand new and spotless. I’m walking behind her and I realize I am shaking because my nervous anxiety is about to completely overtake me. She stops at 214 and opens her door. Her room is pretty similar to my own. It’s a single with a sitting area and a bathroom. I take a seat and she goes over and pulls out a box from under the bed. It’s a photo box, red and green plaid.

She motions me over and before I know it we are both sitting criss-cross applesauce on her bed and she is showing me pictures. There are pictures from her birthday parties growing up. It looks like she had a fairly good set of birthday parties in her life and maybe she just can’t let them go.

“Is that your husband?”

“That was my husband, until the bastard left me for some woman that he got pregnant, while we were married. She has large bouncing bosoms,” she says angrily.

There is that word again! “Well, my goodness, Lauren, I am so sorry to hear that.”

We keep looking through pictures. I notice that her mother is in the photos when she is just a little girl, and she did appear to have a large rack, but then it appears she is with different families. Interesting. Where is her mother in the rest of these photos?

“Lauren, forgive me if I sound nosy, but who are these people with you in these pictures?”

She pulls one out. “That was my first foster family. They were shitheads.” This photo is a young Lauren with a man, woman and twin boys. They look pretty normal. “Here is the second.” She hands me another picture of herself only a little older and standing with an elderly looking couple. “And this was my last one and I killed them,” she says.

Oh bloody hell! I am with a murderer on her birthday. Oh my Lord, be with me. I need to get out of this room.

“I didn’t kill them...on purpose. You see, they took me in after the second family got sick of me and then Papa Rick, that’s what I called him and Mama JoAnn, that’s what I called her, well they got in a car wreck and died. They were the only ones who ever really loved me, besides my mother. They never could have children of their own, so they got me instead. I know they wanted a child like me. They wanted one who was natural and able to hunt. We used to go hunting together.”

“Oh I am so sorry, Lauren! That must have been terrible for you, how old were you?”

“I was just about to turn sixteen when they died. I have lived in group homes ever since. I keep telling these shitheads that I can take care of myself. I know how to hunt and I can make a place for myself down at the river.”

Shit, this is just awful. “So Lauren, what happened to your birth mother?”

“She was too poor to take care of me and turned me over to the state. But I know she loved me. She kept me alive as long as she could. She dropped me off at a center when I was eight years old.”  Lauren looks so sad, and then she smiles and says “It’s my birthday today!”

“I know, Lauren! Happy birthday!” Then suddenly, I have a thought. “Lauren, would it be okay if I came back around five this afternoon to visit?”

She looks confused. “Yeah, sure,” she says, “See ya then.”

I stand up and give her a hug and head for the door.

“Hey, shithead,” she says and I turn around briefly, “thanks for looking at my pictures.”

“Anytime.”

She smiles and I shut the door softly behind me. I think we have just become bosom buddies.