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...
