Crazy

CHAPTER ONE

Tears freeze. If it’s cold enough, and they’re large enough, and you’re unhappy enough, they turn into tiny icicles that cling to eyelashes and stick to cheeks. It happened to me. I was 42, pregnant and unmarried, and had just spent 15 hours and 42 minutes driving from Chicago, Illinois to Center City, Colorado with the love of my life, Leonard Lotnick.

We were starting a new life together, he and I. I’d become a best-selling author and he’d become what he knew in his heart he was born to be: a cowboy. Where we did it, didn’t matter in the least to me. What mattered was the “together” part. And when he chose Center City, I wasn’t a bit surprised. According to their website, it was a former mining camp, just outside Denver, “loaded with Old West history.”

Bingo.

“Saddle up, pardner!” he said, and we climbed into his Mustang, the appropriately- named Old Paint. A drab, a very drab green, it had a red “Cowboys Do it Better!” sticker on the back bumper, a yellow air freshener shaped like a cactus, dangling from the rear-view mirror, and in place of a plastic Jesus, a small rubber horse was suction-cupped to the dash. Then we clicked our seatbelts and waved goodbye to the three-flat, a vintage brownstone with high ceilings, sunny bay window, and wood burning fireplace. It was the best place I’d ever lived.

At the first stoplight Leonard opened the glove box and dug out four roadmaps, one for each state we’d be driving through: Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado.

“You don’t know the way?” I asked.

“That’s what maps are for,” he informed me.

I sighed, and started unfolding Illinois, and by the time I got it open, it blocked our view out the front windshield.

“Sally…” Leonard swatted it out of the way.

“Sorry.” I gathered it up and tried to start over, but it was like trying to get the genie back in the bottle. “Leonard,” I said. “What gave you the impression that I could read a road map, or refold one for that matter? You might as well ask me to make an origami swan out of a gasoline receipt.”

He frowned at me.

“Okay.” I threw Illinois into the back seat. “I’ll take another crack at it, when we get to Iowa…if you can find Iowa.”

This was February, cold, dark, dreary February in the Midwest, so there was virtually nothing to look at besides a map. Mile after mile, with Leonard’s sister Isobel’s urn buckled securely in the backseat, Old Paint’s tread-bare tires slapping the asphalt, and Patsy Cline continually wailing about being crazy, I inched my finger along a fat red line, trying to keep up. Then, all at once, Leonard would cry, “This it?” And by the time I realized that yes, it was, the exit was shrinking to the size of a period behind us.

Speaking of which: I was two months late, and I don’t mean for an appointment, and I didn’t know how to tell Leonard. We’d never talked about children, anybody’s children, least of all our own. I had gleaned, however, from things both said and unsaid, that parenthood had never been in the cards for him. He’d rarely mentioned his father, his mother had died believing she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and his sister had killed herself. His gene pool was polluted. Why take a chance?

But Leonard is human, and so am I, and so after two years of “sheltering,” during a global pandemic—he on the third floor; I on the second—eventually, we did take a chance, although it didn’t seem particularly chancy at the time. And after that went so well, we took another and another until we’d made love too many times to count. So, unless I’d missed something, besides a couple of periods, we’d also made a child, a child likely to ruin everything.

Note to Baby: Nothing is foolproof (especially latex).

The first clue was hidden in a jumbo tub of buttered popcorn Leonard bought at a Bat Masterson Movie Marathon, mid-February, 2022, about two weeks before we left for Colorado. Ordinarily, I loved buttered popcorn. As far as I was concerned, it was the only reason, besides sitting close to Leonard in a dark room for six hours, for agreeing to attend a Bat Masterson Movie Marathon in the first place. That night, though, the tub might as well have been filled with rotting pig innards.

Still, even though all the signs were there, in spades, I remained in denial, my favorite place to be: the morning sickness was indigestion, and would pass; I was, most likely, getting a jump on menopause; my circadian rhythms were out of whack. But by the time we reached Des Moines—derived from the Indian word moingona, meaning “river of the burial mounds”—if I’d had a shovel, and the strength, I’d have dug a hole and buried myself in it. Leonard, convinced that COVID had finally caught up with me, talked me into allowing a Walgreen’s whitecoat, wearing a red clown nose, to ram a nasal swab clear up to my frontal lobe.

“Negative,” the clown reported, to which Leonard shrugged, told me he was starving, and was going next door to McDonald’s; did I want anything? I told him I’d love a vanilla shake, and to go ahead, I’d meet him in the car. “I need to buy…something.”

I knew that somewhere in that Walgreens, a home pregnancy test lurked, as large and threatening as a gorilla ready to tear me apart. Slowly, I inched up on it, past douches and ovulation kits, until there I was, face to face with a convention of apes: Clear-Blue Easy, First Response, E.P.T. As I stood there, trying to figure out which was fastest, easiest, cheapest (and, if I was lucky, the one that’d give me a negative result), it felt as if the eyes of all my fellow Walgreen’s shoppers were on me, all wondering why a woman my age would be buying a home pregnancy test. What was I? Like 50? I grabbed the cheapest one and hurried to the checkout.

When I placed it on the counter, that sleeping beast, now alone in the spotlight, seemed to come to life, leaping to its full height—about a hundred feet—beating gigantic fists on its hairy chest and roaring: LOOK AT ME! I’M A HOME PREGNANCY TEST!

The checkout girl scanned the box without showing much interest. But when she looked up, and took me in: wrinkles (not a lot, but still…); hair (yes, there were a few gray strands); backs of my hands (it’s a freckle, not an age spot), she said, “Whoa,” and I could almost see a thought bubble form above her head: Jeez. What is she, like 50?

“I know.” I picked up the bagged gorilla, zipped it into my purse and hurried out to the car.

“All set?” Leonard asked, handing me my shake.

“All set.” I tossed my purse into the back seat, but never forgot, for one moment, that behind me there was a gorilla, riding quietly next to Isobel, waiting, none too patiently, to be released.

As we approached a MaxiMart in Kearney, Nebraska—motto: “Kearney’s got it all!”—I asked Leonard to stop. I’d developed a wicked craving for…something. Something salty, and something sweet; I’d know it when I saw it…and I did. Fig Newtons and string cheese. Yes. Kearney Nebraska did have it all.

But on the outskirts of Denver—slogan: “Denver. Where it’s legal to get a Rocky Mountain high!”—I was out of Newtons, peeling the threads off the last tube of cheese and searching desperately for a grocery store. Instead, I found the sign marking our destination: Rancho Grande, whittled into a weathered plank of plywood inexplicably shaped like Texas, a community sprung up like a weed patch, out in the middle of nowhere: Leonard’s favorite place to be.

Grinning wildly, he turned in and began to weave down narrow, treeless streets—Pecos Pete Path, Westward Ho Way—until we arrived at the intersection of Roy Rogers Road and Dale Evans Drive.

“Here she is!” Leonard yelped as he parked Old Paint in front of a small, brown hovel, one of six identical small, brown hovels craving paint like I craved Newtons, discernable from one another by only a bunch of reflective numbers, glued to plastic horseshoes dangling from light posts stuck in lawns the size of bath towels.

“That can’t be her,” I said, picking a fig seed out of my teeth. “It looks like the shack where The Rifleman lived.”

“I know!” Leonard leaned over, planted a kiss on my lips, and I began to dissolve, but not in a good way. He leaped out, opened the shotgun-side door for me. I grabbed my purse, tucked Isobel under one arm, and we stood beside the curb—no, wait, there are no curbs in Rancho Grande—gazing at our new home. I tried, but could not hold back the tears, and when I did manage a little smile for Leonard’s sake, they broke free and slid down my cheeks like a flotilla of tiny ice floes.

Note to Baby: Do not commit yourself, in even a casual way, to a person with whom you have not driven across the country. A long car ride is like a preview of what two people might expect their lives to be like…down the road, so to speak. (And judging from that trip, if Leonard and I ever did, indeed, succeed in making a new life together, it looked as if he’d be in the driver’s seat, we’d lose our way a lot, and at the end, at least one of us would be in tears.)

“Look how the snow twinkles, Sally,” he said, as if he’d never seen the stuff before.

“Snow’s snow,” I muttered.

When I dared to look again at 245780W231 Roy Rogers Road, I realized that the little brown hovels were actually three, two-story duplexes; each sharing a carport, a driveway, and a wall. The one connected to ours had an old orange Vanagon parked outside, and a wheelchair ramp; ours did not. Before I had a chance to ask if Rancho Grande might be a retirement community, Leonard took me by the elbow and we slipped and slid up the icy walk. On the way I noticed a sled, an old Flexible Flyer, oddly enough, on the same neighbors’ lawn. Pointing to it, I mentioned I’d had one just like when I was a little girl.

“Well, I sure hope there aren’t a lot of rug rats here.”

“Why? You don’t like children?”

“It’s more like I just don’t want them here, on top of me.”

“We might have to move,” I said, trying hard to keep the enthusiasm out of my voice.

“No way.” He replied, and unlocked the front door. And there, before us, was, I swear, a room right out of Little House on the Prairie.

Pine paneling everywhere. Black, potbelly stove in one corner. Narrow staircase, against one wall, leading up, Leonard informed me, with a happy sparkle in his eyes, to a sleeping loft. My eyes roamed around the room and landed on the most god-awful turquoise and pink floral rug in the living area. A stained, green Herculon sofa sat on one side, two brown chairs, arms, rubbed through to the stuffing, huddled together on the other, like a couple of bedraggled twins; a round black plastic table squatted, rather sinisterly, I thought, between them. Pushed up against the far wall, a TV tray table held an ancient relic of a TV, its antenna fashioned from a hunk of twisted aluminum foil; a mousetrap was, miracle of miracles, empty, but there was evidence that it had not always been so.

“Charming,” I said.

“I knew you’d like it.”

“Do we, by any chance, have indoor plumbing?” I moved into the kitchen, which was defined by two dozen scuffed squares of red linoleum designed to look like bricks…old, weathered, crumbling bricks. “Or would that ruin the…rustic ambiance?” I turned on the faucet and from somewhere down below, a pump suddenly rumbled to life, like a heart reluctant to be resuscitated. The pipes knocked and clanged and finally spewed forth a burst of rusty water into a sink stained the color of dried blood.

“Nope,” Leonard said. “We got it all!”

“Just like Kearney, Nebraska,” I said, but I was really thinking: We got nothing, Leonard. We had it all and left it because you just knew there was a “better life” waiting for us in Colorado. Now it seemed that his better was my worse.

I looked for a thermostat. “And heat?” I asked. He dug around in his back pocket and produced a book of matches. But when he opened the door to the stove, there was no wood. I stared at him, my nose stinging, my face beginning to crumple into an ugly mask.

“Sally. Come here.” He tossed the matches onto an old picnic table, which served as the line of demarcation between kitchen and living room…living area, and opening his jacket, pulled me close and wrapped me up. “We have each other to keep us warm.” It was cold enough to see my breath, but not cold enough for new tears to freeze. They dripped onto Leonard’s shirt and turned the pocket, the place right over his heart, a darker blue, like a new bruise, too painful, just then, to touch.

I took a deep breath, gave Leonard a quick kiss. “Nature calls,” I said, and when I turned, I discovered there were two doors side-by-side at the bottom of the stairs. One was, in fact, the bathroom, but the other, which I thought might be a broom closet, turned out to be a little room —maybe eight-by-ten. “Look,” I said. “Did you know this was here?”

“I did,” he replied.

Finally, I smiled a genuine smile. Office? I thought. A room of my own, just like Virginia Woolfe had advised. I pictured a bookshelf, Leonard would build, on one wall, a desk under the single small window, and Isobel’s suncatchers—purple butterfly, blue moon and stars, and red heart—twirling on fishing line, casting their light on me as a I wrote my bestselling murder-less mystery.

And then I dared to think again: Nursery?

I slipped into the bathroom, which was badly in need of bleach (or a bombing), and when I emerged, we heard a knock on the door. Oh, happy day! I thought. Maybe it’s the Welcome Wagon lady bearing gifts of string cheese and Fig Newtons. “Who’s there?” Leonard called, peering through the peephole…or maybe it was a bullet hole; anything seemed possible.

“It’s me!” It sounded like a female voice, and that we were supposed to know whose. But two words are not a lot to go on.

Leonard sighed and opened the door. There stood a giant of a woman, six feet, at least two hundred pounds, in her mid-sixties, I guessed. Although she looked a little like a Sumo wrestler, she had the serene air of a former hippy. A long, silvery braid hung over one shoulder and pretty much matched the Siamese cat she cradled in one arm; their pale blue eyes matched too. She peered in, and seemed disappointed to find just Leonard and me.

“Can I help you?” He sneezed and sneezed and sneezed again.

Note to Baby: Your father is allergic to cats; you may be too.

“Leonard,” I said, “You’re letting the cold air in…or out. Ask her to come in.” He threw me a look as if I’d just suggested we invite one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to join us, and finally stepped aside. He closed the door, but kept his hand on the knob just in case he had, in fact, let War or Death in. (Pestilence and Famine were already there.)

“Where are the Birds?” she asked.

I searched the room for a cage. “As in parakeets? Parrots? A canary?”

“No, no, no. I’m talking about people, the people that live here.”

“We’re the people that live here,” I informed her. I didn’t know a thing about cats, but that one in her arms looked irritated, or possessed, possibly both. Slowly backing away I added, “We’re subletting—”

“With an option to buy,” Leonard added with a joyful sneeze.

“The Birds must have flown the coop.” I laughed.

“Where’d they go?” The woman was not amused.

“Beats me.”

“They just skipped out?” Her eyes darted about and landed back on me.

“I’m not sure if they skipped or walked or ran. Whatever the case, I’m afraid you’re stuck with us. I’m Sally Randall and that’s Leonard Lotnick—” Leonard

sneezed by way of greeting, then buttoning up his jacket, pulled his Stetson down tightly on his head and strode out the door. “You’ll have to excuse my…my Leonard.

He seems to be allergic to your cat.”

“Impossible. Siamese are hypoallergenic.”

“Must be this place, then.” I reached out to the hypoallergenic creature, even smiled, and it barred its tiny yellow teeth and hissed at me.

“Lola is very protective.”

“I see that.”

“So did the Birds leave a note…or anything here for me?”

“Maybe if you told me who you are…”

“Eleanor Underwood. I live next door.”

I extended a hand and Lola took a swipe at it, so I dropped it to my side. “It’s nice to meet you…one of you, anyway.”

“Lola’s off her meds,” Eleanor said. “So did they?”

“Leave anything? Well, they obviously left dust and dirt. Could you be more specific?”

“A check? Cash? We were friends, you know? They promised to help me out.”

She’s a drug dealer, I thought. We’re now living in a shack next to a drug dealer. I checked Eleanor’s arms for needle tracks, but didn’t see any. Then again,

Lola could've been covering them with her big hypoallergenic body.