Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories Read online

  Baker stood there, looking goofier than any human being had a right to and still reproduce. He grinned at Zoë like she was so cute when she was mad, which let me tell you she isn’t. She’s got a look that can peel paint, but it didn’t have any effect on Baker, him being ninety-nine per cent dumb as a rock.

  “You should be ashamed, Zoë,” Baker said, sort of soft-voiced. “Getting letters like this is what should be illegal. In fact, I think it is because it’s pornography and you can’t get that through the mail. I should just turn you in, but I’m not going to, honey, because I want to save you. How about I pick you up at eight?”

  Zoë said, “Baker, you are dumbass pond scum,” and marched back inside and slammed the door, and Baker just stood there, his grin gone and this terrible hurt look on his face.

  I wanted to go out and tell him that if he wanted to get Zoë, trying to humiliate her was not the way, but I’d already done enough coaching and look where that had got us, so I stayed put, and Baker kind of slumped down the steps, which made me feel sorry for him all over again because he was trying the best he knew how, and he still wasn’t getting Zoë. I knew all about that. I mean, sometimes I watch her walk down the street, and the heads turn, and I can’t see it, whatever it is that Zoë’s got, but I know it’s there, and it’s not beauty because she and I look a lot alike, so it’s something else, and whatever it is, Baker wanted it and so did I. Not in the same way, of course. But I did understand how he felt.

  Zoë didn’t, she just wanted him dead. “Quinn, we have to turn him in,” she said when I got back inside.

  I looked out into the street and saw Mrs. Mueller talking to Mrs. Papacjik which she does everyday anyway while she waits for the mail, but you know what they were talking about that day. I knew if Zoë didn’t stop Baker soon, it was only a matter of time before the news percolated down to Mama, and there would go Zoë’s chances of ever finding heaven on the back porch with Nick again, let alone my chances of getting her married and gone.

  So I didn’t try to stop her when she called the post office, but it didn’t do her any good. This was Tibbett after all, and Baker had been carrying the mail for over six years without a complaint. They promised to look into it, but I could tell from the look in my sister’s eyes when she got off the phone that looking into it was not going to be enough.

  Zoë said, “Quinn, those damn fools aren’t going to do a damn thing, and I’ve got no way to call Nick and stop him from sending me those letters because they won’t let them get phone calls.”

  I said, “Call them and tell them somebody died,” and she said, “I can’t, they check stuff like that, I’d have to really kill somebody to make that work.”

  If you ask me, that’s where she got the idea to shoot Baker.

  She didn’t say anything to me about what she was going to do, and the next day, close to mail time, I came downstairs to see if Baker was going to act right or not, and there she was with our old shotgun under her arm.

  I said, “Zoë, tell me you are not going to kill Baker Turnbull,” and she said, “Quinn, I am not going to kill Baker Turnbull.”

  But she had that look in her eye, so I said, “Give me the gun, Zoë,” and she said, “Quinn, that man has tried to make me small. He has read my life on the steps of my house, and he thinks that is the funniest thing in the world.”

  I moved in front of the door. I said, “Zoë, you do not want to do this. You have always told me that it doesn’t matter what other people think as long as you know who you are, and you know who you are better than anybody else I know, so what difference does Baker Turnbull make?”

  She said, “You don’t get it, Quinn.”

  I said, “I am trying to get it, Zoë, I have been trying most of my life, but I do not see how shooting Baker will make you a better person. Explain that to me.”

  She looked kind of surprised at that, and stopped and thought for a minute, like she’d never had to explain anything before, even to herself, and then she said, “I know who I am, and Baker can read those damn letters until his mouth gets numb and I’m still not going to feel small and stupid and cheap the way he wants me to, but he’s got to know who he’s dealing with here. I am Zoë McKenzie, and I do not put up with men trying to make me feel small, even if they are bat-shit civil servants, so he has to go down for it, and I am the one who has to put him there.” Then she looked me square in the eye and said, “Now are you with him or with me?”

  And the thing is, I was really with Baker because just by living Zoë makes me feel small, although I wouldn’t have put it like that before she said it. I mean, I knew just how Baker felt, wanting to get Zoë down to his size so he could get to her. But I understood what Zoë meant, too. She really did have to stop him, and I really wanted her to, because if Zoë got small, where would I be?

  So I said, “With you, of course,” and then Baker walked up our front steps, and while we watched the son of a bitch tore open a letter and screamed, “Dear Zoë, I dreamed about you naked on your back porch again last night, and I’m going to go blind if I don’t see you soon.”

  I thought, Baker, you are dumb ass pond scum, and I said, “Shoot him,” and Zoë went out on the porch, aimed the shotgun, and said, “Baker, you have just violated your last piece of U.S. mail.”

  Baker’s eyes got wide when he saw the gun, but he said, “Zoë McKenzie, you wouldn’t shoot a person, I know you better than that, honey.”

  Zoë said, “I have loaded this gun with salt pellets, Baker, and as far as I am concerned, you are not a person, you are a mouth with legs and you better use them because I’m not putting up with this shit any more.”

  I think that’s when Baker saw the real Zoë instead of the sweet, pretty thing he’d been going for because he turned and ran, and Zoë opened fire. She caught him right below the mail bag, across the backs of his legs. She has a good eye, my sister, and a steady hand, and I was proud of her at that moment, I truly was, even though I did feel sorry for Baker.

  Baker’s screams were awful, and Mrs. Papacjik came out to look, but he was gone by then, at least one street away because he was moving at a pretty good clip. I thought Baker might prosecute, but Zoë said he wouldn’t dare because he’d lose his job if everybody found out he’d been opening the mail, and she was right, he didn’t. He just asked for a route change, and now we have Mr. Fisher, who is not as obnoxious as Baker but not as interesting, either. He does tend to look kind of uneasy when he delivers the mail, and once I came to the door and he jumped a foot, so I suppose Baker talked, but I don’t care. Like Zoë says, I know who we are, so it doesn’t matter.

  Zoë told Mama about Baker reading the letters, and I think that’s why Mama only grounded her for twenty-four hours because she likes Nick and never had much time for Baker anyway. And Nick is coming home in two weeks in uniform, which should be something to see, and Zoë says she’ll wait that long and see if he’s as good as his letters, so I’m hoping that maybe she’ll get married after all.

  But I can tell you this, any pond scum who tries to make me small is going down for it, even if Mama says we’re not allowed to shoot anybody again. I don’t know who I am, but I know I’m not small.

  Except when I’m next to Zoë.

  Several early readers pointed out that this Quinn doesn’t sound like Quinn from Crazy For You. Of course, she’s only fifteen in this and hasn’t been out of Tibbett to go to college, but it’s still a valid point. I think the reason is that this is where Quinn started. Characters grow and change as you write a novel, you discover so much about them and their characters shift to match that discovery. I think her basic character is still the same: she loves Zoë but feels overshadowed by her, she works behind the scenes to make things happen, and when she’s finally pushed to the wall, she’s ruthless. I might have made the teenaged Quinn a little less forceful if I’d written this after I finished the novel, but this is where she started, and I like her just as she is.

  Sleep Cure

  One
of the key points of Crazy For You is that Quinn is willing to put up with a fair amount of discomfort for quite awhile without much protest while Zoë goes directly for what makes her happy. Zoë is her hedonist father’s daughter, while Quinn is a direct descendent of her mostly silent mother Meggy and her even less talkative grandmother before her, generations of Metzger women who weren’t bred for backtalk. This story is about Meggy at twelve, too much of a Metzger to protest but with her own way of fighting back when things get to be just too damn much. It was one of the harder stories to write because I’m not particularly good at capturing twelve-year-old voices, but I had a good time with Meggy anyway. I love a happy ending.

  I started falling asleep at the dinner table when I was twelve, after my stepfather married my mother and came to live with us. Nathan was a good breadwinner, even his boss Mr. Craven said he was a wonder at selling furniture, and once my mother married him, she didn’t look so worried all the time. He was good to her, and he never yelled at us or hit us or did any of the things some of my friends had to put up with from their real fathers. But he didn’t have any idea of how to be with kids so whenever he’d notice me, he’d put on this really jolly kind of voice and tease me about how dumb I was, how ugly I looked, and how big my feet were. He never gave me mean looks while he said it, and he always looked like he was waiting for me to laugh, but I hated it because at twelve you really do think you’re dumb and ugly and your feet are enormous.

  “Oh, that’s just talk, Meggy,” my mother would say, fluttering her hands, but I could tell she didn’t like it, that she hurt for me, and I wished she’d stick up for me, but she couldn’t. She was just soft and pretty and silent. My grandma was the same way, and my mother said my great-grandma Metzger had been quiet, too. “We Metzgers just weren’t bred for backtalk,” my mother told me, and when Nathan came, I knew she wouldn’t change. So I sat there and took it like a Metzger, while my mother shot me worried looks and said, “Now, Nathan.”

  Of course, Nathan didn’t stop. He’d say, “Time to get Meggy shoes for school. Let’s go down to the canoe rental,” and I’d want to say something, but my answer would get caught in my throat, and my breath would come all wrong, and I’d hurt in my chest. It was like putting the feelings into words would let out so much that I wouldn’t be able to stop, that the words would just sling out, one after another, and I’d say something so evil that I’d kill him, or Mama, or maybe all of us, just one big massacre, and when the police came there would be blood everywhere, and three dead bodies, and they’d be stymied as to what could have killed us. But it would have been the words.

  It was when I didn’t think I could stand it any more that I started falling asleep.

  The first time was at dinner one night about two months after he’d moved in. I’d been talking to our dog, Virginia, after school, and Nathan had come home early and heard me. I knew Virginia was just a dog, I wasn’t expecting any answers, but it was good to hold her on my lap and tell her the things I had to talk about that nobody else could hear. Except that Nathan did, and he had to tell Mama all about it. “Talking to that dog just like she was a person,” he said, and laughed. “Asking that dog questions like she could give the answers.” He made his voice really high and squeaky. “I like Denny Truwell, do you think he likes me? Huh, Virginia, do you?” Then he made his voice really low and growly. “I don’t know, Meggy. Is he sniffing your butt?” Mama said, “Now, Nathan,” and then I don’t remember because I put my head down next to my plate and passed out. Just like that. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life. Mama woke me and put her hand against my forehead and said, “Meggy?” and I felt bad for her because she looked so worried, but Nathan just thought it was the funniest thing ever. “Wear yourself out talking to the dog?” he said.

  After that, I fell asleep every night at the table as soon as Nathan started talking to me, so Mama started feeding me early dinners when I got home from school to make sure I ate enough to keep alive. I still had to go in and eat with her and Nathan at six, but since I was asleep by six-fifteen, it didn’t matter much. Mama took to putting a folded up towel to the right of my plate because that was usually where my head fell, but one night Nathan said I’d been faking it, and I went out cold the other way and ended up with a big bruise on the side of my head. After that, even he had to admit I was really asleep. That’s when Mama took me to the doctor, and I had to take a lot of vitamins, which probably didn’t hurt me but didn’t keep me awake, either. When the vitamins didn’t work, Mama took me into Lima to see a different kind of doctor. “Tell him he should shrink her feet while he’s shrinking her head,” Nathan said at Sunday dinner the night before we went. “Feet that big—” and then I yawned and put my head down, and I missed the rest.

  The doctor was nice enough. “Has anything been upsetting Meggy?” he asked my mother.

  My mother and I looked at each other.

  “No,” she said.

  I went to sleep on the spot, falling out of the chair right there in the doctor’s office and smacking my head on the floor which woke me up pretty smartly, I can tell you.

  The doctor helped me back in the chair and gave my mother one of those fishy looks. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong at home?” he asked, and my mother said, “I’m sure,” and stuck out her hand to catch me.

  “Meggy?” the doctor said, and I wanted to say, “I hate my stepfather and I hope he dies,” but that wasn’t possible, so I said, “No. Everything is fine.”

  He just nodded, and I felt hopeless and deserted because he wasn’t so smart after all. But my mother kept on taking me to him, and he kept on asking me questions and having me draw pictures, and I kept on telling him I was fine, and then one day, he said, “Do you ever dream, Meggy?”

  I wanted to say, “Yes, I dream that Nathan goes away, I dream he gets hit by a car, I dream he swells up and explodes,” but I couldn’t say it. So I said, “Sometimes, but I forget.”

  “The next time you fall asleep,” he told me, “you must tell your dream out loud when you wake up. Even if it sounds bad, you can tell it because it won’t be real, it’ll just be a dream. Will you promise to do that?”

  I nodded, and he turned to my mother. “You must ask her to do that, Mrs. Ludlow. Have her tell you the dreams, and write down what she says, and then we can talk about them when you come back. Will you promise to do that?”

  My mother, a Metzger to the bone, was speechless, but she nodded. When she got home and told Nathan, he groaned. “You paid him good money so Meggy could talk about her dreams?” I yawned but he started talking about the promotion his boss Mr. Craven had promised him, so I didn’t fall asleep until we sat down to dinner again.

  Nathan had to talk about the promotion a lot at dinner, about how he’d invited the Cravens to eat with us on Friday as a thank you, about how they were coming (“Mercy, Nathan,” my mother said) even though they’d never been to any of the other salesmen’s houses for dinner, and about how Mr. Craven had said Nathan was the best salesman they had, but then toward dessert time he finally remembered me and said, “Maybe we can get Meggy’s feet shortened now that we’re going to have all this money. That way maybe old Danny Truwell—”

  My head hit the table with a smack, and I was dreaming I was in the backyard with Virginia and she was telling me stuff. When my mother shook me awake, I yawned at her, and she said, “What did you dream?” and I said right away, still a little dizzy with sleep, “Virginia told me that Nathan is a mean, bad man and all the dogs on the block bark at him when he goes to work.”

  Nathan’s jaw dropped, and I blinked at him, amazed I’d said that, although actually, I hadn’t, Virginia had. He said, “Now wait a minute,” and Mama said, “It’s just a dream.” Then she turned to me and said, “Dessert?” and I said, “Yes, please,” and she said to Nathan, “See, the doctor was right, it’s already working, she’s wide awake.” I had two helpings of chocolate pudding. It was delicious.

  I had more dreams at
dinner the next three nights, really good ones. In the last one, Nathan died, which wasn’t sad at all. He looked at me funny, but he knew I wasn’t faking because my head hit the table so hard each time, even with the towel there. “I think we’ve heard enough dreams,” he said after the death one, and my mother said, “But it’s curing her, she stays awake after she tells the dream.” And even Nathan had to admit they had to do something since the bruises were making the neighbors wonder. But he didn’t like it.

  The night after the death dream was Friday. Nathan’s boss was there and his wife, and we were all behaving really well until Mrs. Craven said, “What a big bruise, Meggy. Did you fall off your bike?” and Nathan said, “Meggy’s so clumsy she—” and I yawned.

  Nathan stopped. Right there in the middle of his sentence, like a cartoon character, he just froze with his mouth open.

  “I bumped my head falling asleep,” I told Mrs. Craven. “It’s all right.”

  “Goodness,” Mrs. Craven said.

  Nathan closed his mouth and looked at me like I was something ticking.

  “I’m much better now,” I said.

  After two or three more dreams, Nathan shut up about me entirely, and I could mostly stand him after that. When I was eighteen, I started working in a realtor’s office, and I met a nice man who laughed a lot and didn’t say mean things ever, even after he’d had a few beers, and I married him and we had two little girls. Nathan died before they were old enough for him to talk to. At the funeral, the minister asked people if they’d like to say a few words, and a lot of people did, talking about what a good, honest businessman Nathan was, and that was true. My mother couldn’t speak, but the minister said he was sure she’d miss him, and that was probably true, too. Then he asked me if I wanted to say anything.