CABBAGE NIGHT

My sister was in the mental hospital again. The reason this time: “I heard a voice that told me to turn into that graveyard near Sears. So I drove around in there and then I started hearing voices that told me to eat only fish from now on. Nothing else, just fish. And I’m not going to, either. Did you know that Jesus only ate fish?”

Apparently this seafood recommendation from the cosmos had inspired her to blow off work and drive right over to Bergen Pines, the state run mental hospital where she was a good customer. She had been there so often that my address book held both her many crossed out home phone numbers and the number for the pay phone in the psych ward. Earlier that day, I had gotten a call from my sister-in-law alerting me that Kara was back in “The Pines” and that she wanted me to call her right away. As usual, the phone kept ringing and ringing but I didn’t hang up. It usually took awhile for the patient who was unlucky enough to have the room closest to the phone to shuffle over and answer it.

After 15 rings, the receiver was lifted and the unofficial receptionist mumbled

“Hurro?”

I asked to speak to my sister, Kara Baynes.

“Who?”

I had been through this several times before and had learned that a visual description would aid the drugged operator.

“She just got there yesterday. She’s a large woman, about 250 pounds, and has blonde hair.”

“Uh, I dunno.”

“Well, would you be nice enough to ask the nurse where to find her and ask her to come to the phone please?”

“Ok.”

At this point, there was always a bang and some thumps when the hand simply released the receiver and the curlicue cord bounced the phone into the wall a few times. About 10 minutes later, I recognized my sister’s voice, but she was slurring her words.

“Hullo?”

“Hi Kara. It’s Liz.”

“Hi”

It took about 7 seconds for her to say this, due to a pharmaceutical cocktail of anywhere from 3 to 7 drugs that was probably coursing through her veins—medications for bipolar disorder/schizophrenia that she chronically avoided taking although they were prescribed to eliminate exactly this type of event.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked, trying to sound caring and upbeat. But even to my own ears, I sounded like a judgmental relative who was annoyed at being inconvenienced yet again and was trying to hide it.

“Well.” Long pause, then with hostility—

“What do you think? They have me on so many drugs I can’t think straight. My head’s all fuzzy.”

“Ok, well, when does the doctor think you’ll be getting out?”

“How would I know? They don’t know what they’re doing around here.”

Another long pause.

“I haven’t even seen a doctor except for when I first got here. Listen, you have to do me a favor. Katy doesn’t have a Halloween costume for tomorrow. She wants to be a rabbit. All you have to do is go to The Rag Shop and get some fake fur for the ears. She has a white headband under the sink in the bathroom at Gram’s house—just use a glue gun and glue the ears to that. I think that’ll work.”

Gee, I thought, very uncharitably. Maybe you should have thought of that before you checked yourself in for another vacation from reality.

“I guess I can do that. I don’t have a car, though. I have to take the bus from the city.”

“You can use mine. Just get Laura to give you a ride to my house, get the keys from there on the hook by the door. Do you know where The Rag Shop is?”

“No, I don’t even know what it is.” I said snobbily, secretly glad that I was completely unaware of any such place.

“Well, Laura knows, she’ll tell you how to get there. It’s in Paramus.”

After I agreed to call Laura, take the bus from New York City 50 minutes north to her house, get a ride 45 minutes south, get the car, go to The Rag Shop and craft a rabbit suit that night, I hung up. After calling in to work with a “family emergency” (rush-order rabbit suit), I went to the port authority and got on the bus. With the gray, cement landscape of Weehawken streaming sadly by out the window, I counted my blessings. I didn’t live in Weehawken and I had enough money for a glue gun.

I went through the motions and eventually wound up at the house where my 7-year-old niece lived. Katy spent her afternoons after school plopped in front of the TV in a dark house with her only friend, her beloved black lab named Sammy. The old furniture, dusty plastic flower arrangements and knick-knacks were soaked in ancient secondhand cigarette smoke while new smoke was blown in daily. Her great grandmother owned the house, and her father slept in the basement as he had for all of his 37 years. At the foot of the driveway was a fake traffic sign, which read: “No Parking except for Harleys”. In the garage was the dusty Harley he had been caught driving drunk so many times his license had been revoked. Next to it sat the bicycle he rode to his job as a grill man at a 5-table coffee shop in the next town.

Katy’s mother was only slightly more ambitious. She had at least been talking for 20 years about various career paths. But she was still working as a waitress and part-time sales clerk at The Merry-Go-Round, a used clothing store with a name that matched the way I was starting to feel about my sister’s mental illness. Her attempted suicide when Katy was 2 ½ and subsequent hospitalizations had caused so much upheaval in her little girl’s life that the state had stepped in, sent Katy to live with her father, and demanded that both parents attend classes and get treatments so that they might be able to retain their parental rights.

I loved this little girl, I had held her when she was only hours old and felt her new spirit shimmer into my heart. I couldn’t stand to see the way she was forced to live, going from one house to the other, her mother always late, hastily gathering her belongings after holiday gatherings, toys and clothes spilling out of plastic grocery bags, dragging my niece away from the party in order to return her to her Dad’s house by the 8 p.m. curfew. I had a recurring vision of myself swooping down into her room as an eagle, snatching her up in my giant beak and flying off to the west where she would be safe and happy and away from the turmoil, ignorance and neglect that surrounded her. Only the law had prevented me from doing it. I couldn’t take her away, but I could at least make her a Halloween costume so that’s what I did.

Afterward, my sister-in-law and I dutifully prepared to visit Kara in the hospital. We filled a Tupperware container with treats: brie, crackers, chips, chocolate, and some fruit for appearance’s sake. Because it was the night before Halloween, or cabbage night as it is called in New Jersey, my brother’s kids were trying on their costumes and pulling through a box of old Halloween stuff dragged down from the attic. While I was packing a six-pack of Coke into the goodie bag, I heard my 6 year old nephew yelp,

“What the heck is this?”

I turned around and saw him swinging a pinkish flesh-colored piece of rubber around, which I instantly recognized as a Conehead skin cap from one of my old costumes, circa 1975.

“Oh, that’s a Conehead! Can I see it for a second?”

He looked perplexed but handed it to me.

“What’s a Conehead?” he asked, as though I was the stupid one for knowing what it was.

“Well, back in the seventies there was a show on TV that had this family on it called The Coneheads. They were really from outer space but they told everybody they were from France.”

I pulled the long rubber cap onto my head and my nephew started laughing. I realized my curly hair was sticking out from the bottom and I wasn’t getting the right effect—I probably looked more like Bozo than a Conehead, but out of desperation for laughs, I continued.

“They sat in front of the TV and ate whole bags of chips like this.” I demonstrated by grabbing a bag of Doritos off the counter and pouring the contents into my mouth, dribbling chips onto the floor, much to my sister-in-law’s dismay. “And they drank whole six-packs of soda at one time like this.” I said, as I pretended to open each can of Coca Cola making a fizzing noise and then fake-guzzling it. They would say, “We’re from France.” And instead of kissing, they would play ring toss with their cones to show that they loved each other.”

“They did not!” he insisted.

“They did too. But they’re not real, just TV characters. You know what? I’m going to wear this to visit Aunt Kara.”

“You’re going to the hospital with that on?” my sister-in-law asked, hoping I would realize I’d look stupid and embarrass her and maybe take the thing off.

“Yep. Why not? I’ll blend in with the inmates. Let’s go.”

My niece and nephew watched in amazement as I walked out the back door wearing the Conehead, carrying the six-pack and got into the car. My sister-in-law wears white turtlenecks with cute teddy bears on them at Christmas, and has watched every episode of “All My Children” since she was 13. She knits slippers and has a mousepad emblazoned with her smiling children. I knew she thought she had made a terrible mistake marrying my brother, which she had, and now here she was, stuck in a Ford Taurus with a woman in a Conehead on her way to a mental institution.

To be continued...

CABBAGE NIGHT - PART TWO

I understood her discomfort but I wasn’t about to forfeit the only fun I was likely to have all weekend. I had been doing someone else’s chores for them for 24 hours but now, I had snapped back and it was my time. If I wanted to have a little fun in a mental hospital, what was wrong with that? It was cabbage night, after all, “mischief night” in other parts of the US but regardless of its name, it meant that if someone is supposed to do something (like hand out candy or take one’s medications or take care of one’s own child) and doesn’t, anything goes.

The mood in the car was one of highly mixed emotions. Apprehension, concern, duty, dread and (supplied only by me) frivolity pervaded the car’s interior like a soup of volatile gases. If we were to run over a raccoon, I would have been as likely to squeal with glee and toast the creature’s last seconds with a nearby Coke as to weep softly and say a few reverent words in its memory. Bipolar disorder has a tendency to catch on that way. We made small talk like we always did. Both of us are the oldest siblings, each of us bossier and bigger control freaks than Lucy Van Pelt. But we got along because what was unspoken between us was that we both believed that the two of us were the only ones in the group who were at all competent. We believed we were superior and that made us equals in our own unevolved minds.

As we pulled into a spot in the hospital parking lot, Laura pursed her lips. She got out

of the car and grabbed the bags from the backseat. It made sense that she carried the food and I carried the six-pack, since it was an accessory to my costume. Laura is Finnish, viciously competitive and a know-it-all. I’ve heard her say “It’s SOW-na, not SAW-na” at least 4 times. 5’11” and blond, she has a long thick neck like a birch tree trunk and very large hands and feet.

I watched her get out of the car. She reminded me of a Female Viking. She was big—as large as a man— and as she opened the door with her formidable hand, I suddenly pictured her in a cap with horns, fur vest and a bronze shield. She folded her arms and applied a disdainful expression. I could easily imagine her at the stern of a ship as it made its way toward the shoreline of an unsuspecting village where she and her mates would plunder and pillage with greedy glee.

I was fighting back a grin as she stood openly regarding my Cone.

“You’re not really going to wear that into the building, are you?”

“Yep, I am. But you can walk ahead of me if you want.”

She took me up on this and walked 15 feet ahead of me as we approached the electronic door which read:

“Welcome to Bergen Pines. New Jersey’s Premier Provider of Mental Health Services”

Once inside, she kept her distance. I was hoping for attention, and was mildly disappointed that I wasn’t getting any as we walked down the hall following arrows to the inpatient ward. Surely some nurse or orderly would at least smile at my attempt to cheer the sick on Halloween. But as each one passed, eyes were consistently averted as though my getup was about as interesting as the mint green floor tiles. A freckled, middle-aged nurse who looked like she had been supervising ADD toddlers all day looked up from her magazine at the nurse station.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, we’re here to see our sister, Kara Baynes. She was admitted yesterday.”

She looked back down at the page as if to absorb one last bit of entertainment before going back to the drudgery of her actual job. I looked too—it was a catalog. The main photo on the page featured a chubby orange tabby cat in a brown crocheted vest and matching cap with a brim, tied with a bow under its “chin”, a fluffy red pompom on top. Fake autumn leaves had been art directed around it as if to suggest that this is what stylish cats are wearing this season. The cat looked trapped and pissed off. She flipped the catalog shut with a heavy sigh and came out from behind the counter, ushering us down a long hallway, which led to a high-security metal door which she opened with a secret punched-in code. This led to another long hallway. I kept peeking to the left and right as we walked past the patient’s rooms hoping to catch a glimpse of something—I don’t know—weird? Hilarious? Heartbreaking?

The rooms were all empty.

“The residents are downstairs in the gym now. They’ve just finished up and they’re handing out the prizes.” the nurse told us.

“Prizes for what?” I asked.

Most compliant pill popper? Enduring the most electric shocks? Least likely to cause a commotion?

“Oh, they had a little Halloween party and there was a contest for best costume.”

With a wave of her freckled batwing, she indicated that we were to enter the visiting area. I remembered the beige Formica tables, orange plastic chairs and bad lighting from visits past.

“Have a seat. They should be up in a minute—I’ll bring your sister in.” the nurse said.

“Ok, thanks.” I replied, in a tone more suggestive of someone waiting to go in for a big interview than someone visiting her schizophrenic sister in an asylum.

We began busying ourselves emptying the bag of treats. We spread the food out on a little section of the table, arranging the wedges of cheese, chips, crackers, candy and drinks as if we were about to play bridge with the girls and it was 1955. We sat down to wait. Laura made a point of looking up at my flesh colored cone which was beginning to become sweaty and uncomfortable. Then she popped open a Diet Coke and sat back in her chair with a look of regret.

Was she regretting having married my brother, who was financially irresponsible, obsessed with office supplies, verbally abusive toward her, beat their two young children with a leather belt and made them eat soap if they cursed? Or was she simply regretting that she had agreed to come here? Either way, she wasn’t in a good mood.

I did not let that alter mine, however. I was in a familiar mood of mine where all the annoying motions of living life give way to “lets just have some fucking fun right now!” I was fiercely determined to get a laugh out of my headgear. Focusing on this helped me to avoid thinking about all the pain-in-the-ass things I would have to do in the wake of this particular hospitalization. Once again, my sister had no place to live, no job and no money.

I heard noises in the hallway, so I looked toward the doorway. A second later, my sister burst into the room, flinging her head from side to side, waving her arms wildly like a giant bird, sending six-foot raffia streamers in rainbow hues in a million directions. She was doing some sort of war dance or rain dance with her limbs and laughing maniacally. She saw me in the Conehead and a peal of laughter flew out of her mouth at high volume.

“Oh, my God! I can’t believe it! That is too funny! Guess what? I won 2^nd place!” my sister announced, still dancing and laughing. The only one to laugh at my cone was the one who needed a laugh the most.

“What are you?” I asked.

“I’m a—I’m a—I don’t know what I am! But I won!!!” she announced.

She was inappropriately proud and started squealing at top volume again. She hugged us. We popped open a couple of sodas and toasted her nebulous victory. Suddenly there was a festive air in the room. I told her about how I had fashioned the rabbit ears and tied pink satin ribbons on Katy’s pigtails and how sweet she looked. We told Kara that we would help her find an apartment and tried to get her to think about the real world to which she would soon return. I popped candy corn into my mouth as I leaned back and listened to her plans for a grand two-bedroom apartment and community college courses to become an X-Ray technician. It was like watching Rocky Horror Picture Show for the eleventh time. I knew all the dialogue by heart, except that the actual job title would change every few years—instead of nurse, sonographer, or recording studio engineer, this time it was X-Ray technician.

“Oh, wait! I want you to meet my friend! I’ll be right back!” she said, and ran out of the room.

Two minutes later, she returned with a bald, six foot four black man in his early forties who was very dark-skinned—almost eggplant in hue. She proudly introduced us, motioning feverishly with her flailing streamered arms like a hallucinating game show hostess. Jake smiled a big, toothless grin. Then he looked at the little spread we had laid out. “Is that CHEE-cake?” he asked of the Brie. It was shaped like cheesecake, so a pretty good guess.

“No, it’s cheese.” I said. “Have some.”

He grabbed the wedge with one hand and pinched off a small hunk with the fingers of the other, thus insuring that the cheese was his and his alone. He gummed the gooey white cheese between his dark gums, and nodded approvingly.

“Can I try it on?” he asked, pointing to the Conehead.

“Sure”, I said. The cone was now very uncomfortable and the ROI was starting to seem not worth it. Glad to get rid of it, I took it off and handed the pink, rubbery mass to Jake. He struggled with it, so Kara assisted as best she could with the raffia streamers getting in the way, but eventually they got it stretched onto his shiny, dark skull.

“How do I look?” He asked innocently, looking at Kara, Laura and me.

No one had the nerve to answer.

My sister piped up “Too bad you didn’t have that on before, maybe you would’ve won first prize!”

He did seem more animated with it on. In the corner of the room, a sullen teenage boy was mumbling to his mother, who was staring at her son staring at the floor. As soon as the kid’s father noted Jake sporting the Conehead, he began eyeing us suspiciously as though we were the crazy ones, certainly not his son here who was probably in for driving around Bergen County stoned as hell or stealing CDs from Tower Records. I offered them some snacks but they declined.

What kind of small talk is appropriate here, I wondered? Well, I didn’t know so I just jumped right in.

“So Jake, what are you in for?” I asked.

“Liz!” my sister yelped, as if I had asked the Queen of England if she shaved “down there”.

But it didn’t seem to bother Jake. He explained that he had been in and out of The Pines a lot over the years because, like my sister, he didn’t take his meds.

“So what happened this time?” I asked.

“I dunno. I live with my Moms but she doesn’t like me to watch “COPS”.

Suddenly, Jake became rowdy and loud—it happened so fast that it was unnerving. His voice got louder and louder and I think we were all afraid of what he might be capable of doing in that small room.

“She says it’ll give me ideas. So she turned the channel on me and made me watch that crazy gumbo chef that yells “BAM” all the time. I hate that motherfucker—I mean, I can’t stand the dude. He was stirring some shit and just about to add that “essence” crap when the people started clapping and yelling and I don’t know what the fuck came over me, I just got pissed off and picked up the TV and threw it out the fucking window. It’s better off I broke it because if I heard that “BAM” one more time, I swear I would’ve killed someone with a motherfuckin’ baseball bat. My mom started calling me a crazy jackass and started screaming about me breaking the TV. Then before I know it the cops are banging on the door and that’s pretty much it.”

After the outburst, he instantly changed back into a semi sedated state, like he was changing the channel on himself. His face softened and he smiled innocently. It was so startling that we all just stared in silence. Then, with his long dark fingers, he readjusted the rim of the pinkish beige cone on his head and said, “I like CHEE cake”, and took another bite of Brie like a sweet little boy.

Ok, I thought, cheesecake it is.

That night, lying on the bottom bunk of my niece’s bed, I stared out the window up at the full moon. I asked the universe to make sure my niece would not fall through the cracks that came with her life. I asked that my sister might find a way to live happily in the world. I offered to do anything the universe asked of me. A tear rolled down my cheek, and I fell into a deep dark sleep.