The Excellent Lombards(67)

Brianna whacked his arm. “Oh, my God, you are a laugh riot!”

William was going to college on September 9, and in college he’d say many witty things to many girls, all of whom would incessantly say OhmyGod, and he would be gone. He would be gone.





23.


Future Farmers of America




When was the last time I’d felt even a little glimmer of happiness? I couldn’t remember. It seemed certain that never again would joy be accorded to me, my mother going as far as to wonder, to my face, if I would consider going to the doctor. She meant a shrink. It was right after the fruit sale when she said to me, “Francie, I want to talk to you.”

I was in my room reading Heart of Darkness, lying on my bed. She wanted to talk to me? Fine, talk away. She pulled up a chair as if I was in a ward and she was a nun paying the patient a visit. In a conversational tone she said, “I’m worried about you.”

Rivets were in short supply in the jungle. I kept reading.

“You seem so unhappy.”

I shut my eyes.

“I just wonder,” she went on, as if she was having a fun idea, “why you’re so hard on us. You walk around glaring at everyone. I wonder if you realize how combative you always seem. And negative. I wonder if you’re aware of it.”

I rolled to my side in order to look at her, not in a glaring sort of way but because of my astonishment at how little she understood me. If she had known me even somewhat she would have appreciated how full of love I was. She would have understood that in fact I was overtaken by love. Love, at a basic level, was all I had inside of myself. “I don’t walk around glaring,” I said.

“But you do. I’m trying to help you, Francie. I’m wondering why you’re so unhappy, first. And second, I’m telling you that in company you look somewhat murderous. When you’re talking to us.”

I’m full of love, I wanted to yell. Most of the time I love you. More than you deserve. I love everyone! I love our life!

But I didn’t shout. I didn’t even speak. Because to reveal that information would have been to invite a diagnosis that would sound like a line from a Lifetime movie. That’s the trouble, Francie, she would no doubt say. You just can’t love the world as much as you do.

She next said, “I think you should consider going back to Dr. O’Connor.”

“I just had my appointment.”

“He might be able to give you something to feel better. An anti-depressant. And he could recommend someone for you to talk to, a therapist.” When I didn’t answer she said, “Francie?”

“No,” I said dully. “No, thank you.”

“Please don’t rule out—”

“I don’t need therapy. I don’t need birth control pills. I don’t need Prozac.”

There was no help for my condition. No help for the situation. Nothing to be done.



And still no help for it a week later when William was invited, along with a few other accepted bright stars, to meet with the Math and Computer Science Department professors at the College of His Choice. It was apparently a very special select weekend party, probably all-you-can-eat macaroni and cheese and garlic bread, fluffy French toast, starch and song, obeisance to Alan Turing, prayers and candle lighting, thanks be to Steve Jobs. My father, who so rarely had an outing, was going to drive him to Minnesota, the trip commencing on Friday at 2 p.m., the soonest William felt he could get away from his obligations at school. I was unwell that day, taking the opportunity to reread some of my old favorite books, impossible to get enough of Anne Boleyn’s capers with the king.

At about one o’clock, having been in bed long enough, I thought I might take some air. My father was over at the unheated apple barn, standing ready in his thick blue coveralls to wait on any customer who might happen by. My mother was as always at the library. I got the old picnic hamper and stocked it with apples, cheese, bread, water, cookies, and my books, along with a bag of other necessities. Off I headed into the woods in my parka with the fur-trimmed hood. It was a sunny December afternoon, mild for the season. Also, I had, in my pocket, the keys to the car. I went straight to our place of refuge, William’s and mine, that old gouge where the tree roots had been upended. In all the years since we’d first used it as our safe haven, that night when we’d been lost, no one had gotten around to cutting up the limbs for firewood.

I climbed into the cold damp chamber. It was considerably smaller than I remembered. A blanket and a duvet just fit, the blanket for the floor of the tomb, the duvet for wrapping up. Cozy, actually. A branch ledge for my basket, enough food to stave off starvation for a day or two. The headlamp in my pocket with the car key, so when it got dark I might read and not strain my eyes. The books beside me, my very old favorites, going way back to The Baby-Sitter’s Little Sister series and The Boxcar Children.

As I read about children who triumph I began to get angry, angrier than I had been in general. Why were children always heroic in literature? Why the brutish lies to us? How patronizing! No, evil, it was evil to deceive young life. Even—yes, it was true—even Kind Old Badger was statistically improbably successful, like a drug those happy endings, the parents feeding the tykes narcotics, so many zombies set out into the world. It was cold in the hole, it was loveless. I should have brought matches. Why hadn’t I brought matches to build a fire? It was everyone’s fault! And especially William’s, that I was freezing out in this hole. Why did he need to go and visit a place he already knew he liked? Why would professors invite high school students to campus when they had plenty of college boys to instruct? I was opening one of the Baby-Sitter books when a strange thing happened. The photographs that Stephen Lombard had taken years before, of William and me in the barn playing, those five black-and-white pictures that the spy had snapped, slipped from the pages.